''Aldrovandia gracilis'', also known as the gracile halosaur, is a species of

ray-finned fish Actinopterygii (; ), members of which are known as ray-finned fishes, is a class of bony fish. They comprise over 50% of living vertebrate species. The ray-finned fishes are so called because their fins are webs of skin supported by bony or hor ...

in the family

Halosauridae Halosaurs are eel-shaped fishes found only at great ocean depths. As the family Halosauridae, halosaurs are one of two families within the order Notacanthiformes; the other being the deep-sea spiny eels, Notacanthidae. Halosaurs are thought to h ...

. It is found in the north west Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico on the continental shelf and slope. It feeds on

benthic The benthic zone is the ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water such as an ocean, lake, or stream, including the sediment surface and some sub-surface layers. The name comes from ancient Greek, βένθος (bénthos), meaning "t ...

invertebrates including

bivalve molluscs Bivalvia (), in previous centuries referred to as the Lamellibranchiata and Pelecypoda, is a class of marine and freshwater molluscs that have laterally compressed bodies enclosed by a shell consisting of two hinged parts. As a group, bival ...

, amphipods,

mysid Mysida is an order of small, shrimp-like crustaceans in the malacostracan superorder Peracarida. Their common name opossum shrimps stems from the presence of a brood pouch or "marsupium" in females. The fact that the larvae are reared in thi ...

polychaete worms Polychaeta () is a paraphyletic class of generally marine annelid worms, commonly called bristle worms or polychaetes (). Each body segment has a pair of fleshy protrusions called parapodia that bear many bristles, called chaetae, which are m ...

and brittle stars.

References

*C. F. Phleger, P. W. Grimes, A. Pesely, and M. H. Horn, '' Swimbladder Lipids of Five Species of Deep Benthopelagic Atlantic Ocean Fishes'', Bulletin of Marine Science, Volume 28, Number 1, January 1978, pp. 198–202(5). Halosauridae Fish described in 1896 {{Notacanthiformes-stub