Agonidae

Agonidae

[ə′gän·ə·dē]

(vertebrate zoology)

The poachers, a small family of marine perciform fishes in the suborder Cottoidei.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Agonidae

 

a family of fishes of the suborder Cottoidei of the order Perciformes. Body length, 10–20 cm (sometimes to 40 cm). The body is enclosed in a hard armor consisting of eight longitudinal rows of large bony plates. There are more than 25 genera, with 50 species. The fishes are found primarily in the northern Pacific. Only one endemic genus is known in the north Atlantic, Arctic, and Antarctic oceans. The Agonidae are bottom-dwelling fishes. They usually spawn in the summer and autumn, depositing large, sticky eggs. The fishes feed on benthic invertebrates.

REFERENCE

Nikol’skii, G. V. Chastnaia ikhtiologiia, 3rd ed. Moscow, 1971.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.