The blennioid family Chaenopsidae includes the pike-blennies, tube-blennies, and flagblennies, all percomorph marine

fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of li ...

in the order

Blenniiformes Blenny (from the Greek and , mucus, slime) is a common name for many types of fish, including several families of percomorph marine, brackish, and some freshwater fish sharing similar morphology and behaviour. Six families are considered "true ...

. The family is strictly tropical, ranging from

North North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating Direction (geometry), direction or geography. Etymology T ...

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

. Members are also present in waters off

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

and

Korea Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...

. Fourteen genera and 90 species are represented, the largest being the

sarcastic fringehead The sarcastic fringehead (''Neoclinus blanchardi'') is a small but very hardy saltwater fish that has a large mouth and aggressive territorial behavior, for which it has been given its common name. When two fringeheads have a territorial battle ...

, ''Neoclinus blanchardi'', at in length; most are much smaller, and the group includes perhaps the smallest of all vertebrates, ''

Acanthemblemaria paula The dwarf spinyhead blenny (''Acanthemblemaria paula'') is a species of chaenopsid blenny found in coral reefs around Belize, in the western central Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an are ...

'', measuring just long as an adult. With highly compressed bodies, some may be so elongated as to appear

eel Eels are ray-finned fish belonging to the order Anguilliformes (), which consists of eight suborders, 19 families, 111 genera, and about 800 species. Eels undergo considerable development from the early larval stage to the eventual adult stage ...

-like; chaenopsids are scaleless and lack

lateral line The lateral line, also called the lateral line organ (LLO), is a system of sensory organs found in fish, used to detect movement, vibration, and pressure gradients in the surrounding water. The sensory ability is achieved via modified epithelial ...

s. Their heads are rough and may be armed with spines. There may be 17 to 28 spines in the

dorsal fin A dorsal fin is a fin located on the back of most marine and freshwater vertebrates within various taxa of the animal kingdom. Many species of animals possessing dorsal fins are not particularly closely related to each other, though through conv ...

, with two in the

anal fin Fins are distinctive anatomical features composed of bony spines or rays protruding from the body of a fish. They are covered with skin and joined together either in a webbed fashion, as seen in most bony fish, or similar to a flipper, as se ...

. The habit of taking up home in abandoned

worm Worms are many different distantly related bilateral animals that typically have a long cylindrical tube-like body, no limbs, and no eyes (though not always). Worms vary in size from microscopic to over in length for marine polychaete wor ...

tubes has earned some species in this family the name "tube-blenny". Many will also inhabit empty clam shells, which also serve as nesting sites; males are known to guard the brood. Some species have dorsal fins which are significantly higher towards the head, explaining the moniker "flagblenny".

Crustacean Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean group ...

s make up the bulk of the chaenopsid diet. At least one species found in the

Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...

, ''

Emblemariopsis diaphana ''Emblemariopsis diaphana'', the glass blenny, is a species of chaenopsid blenny found in coral reefs in the Florida Keys, USA, in the western central Atlantic ocean. It can reach a maximum length of TL. The specific name refers to this specie ...

'', is known to form a

symbiotic Symbiosis (from Greek , , "living together", from , , "together", and , bíōsis, "living") is any type of a close and long-term biological interaction between two different biological organisms, be it mutualistic, commensalistic, or parasit ...

relationship with stony coral, ''

Meandrina meandrites ''Meandrina meandrites'', commonly known as maze coral, is a species of colonial stony coral in the family Meandrinidae. It is found primarily on outer coral reef slopes in the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. Description ''Meandrina meandr ...

''. According to some authorities the Chaenopsidae is not

monophyletic In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gro ...

if the genera ''

Neoclinus ''Neoclinus'' is a genus of chaenopsid blennies found in the North Pacific ocean along the coasts of California, Baja California, Japan, Korea and Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the ...

'' and ''

Stathmonotus ''Stathmonotus'' is a genus of chaenopsid blennies found in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Species There are currently seven recognized species in this genus: * '' Stathmonotus culebrai'' Seale, 1940 (Panamanian worm blenny) * '' Stathmonotu ...

'' are included. They propose that ''Stathmonotus'' be included in the family Labrisomidae and that ''Neoclinus'', and the closely related ''

Mccoskerichthys ''Mccoskerichthys sandae'', the Tufted blenny, is a species of chaenopsid blenny, found around Costa Rica and Panama, in the eastern central Pacific ocean. It can reach a maximum length of TL. This species feeds primarily on small crustacean ...

'', be placed in the

tribe The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English language, English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in p ...

Neoclinini, stating that further study is required to clarify this clade's true relationships.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1592966 Blenniiformes