Cottoidei
suborder of fishes
Cottoidei is a suborder of ray-finned fishes in the order Perciformes. It contains sculpins, snailfish, blobfish, greenlings, and sablefish. They are primarily found in temperate, polar, and deep waters, especially in the Northern Hemisphere.
Taxonomy
Cottoidei was first proposed as a taxonomic grouping in 1835 by the Swiss-American zoologist Louis Agassiz. The 5th edition of Fishes of the World classifies the Cottoidei as a suborder of the order Scorpaeniformes. Other workers have found that if the Scorpaeniformes, as delimited in Fishes of the World, is not included in the Perciformes it renders the Perciformes paraphyletic. These workers retain the Cottoidei as a suborder within the Perciformes but include the zoarcoids and Sticklebacks and allies as the infraorders Zoarcales and Gasterosteales while reclassifying most superfamilies of Fishes of the World as infraorders. Presently, Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes keeps it as a suborder of Perciformes.
Fossil otoliths of cottoids date to the Early Eocene, while skeletal remains only appear from the Early Oligocene onwards.
Subdivisions
The Cottoidei is divided into the following superfamilies, families and subfamilies:
Superfamily Anoplopomatoidea Quast, 1965
Family Anoplopomatidae Jordan & Gilbert, 1883 (Sablefishes)
Superfamily Zaniolepidoidea Shinohara, 1994
Family Zaniolepididae Jordan & Gilbert, 1883 (Combfishes)
Superfamily Hexagrammoidea Shinohara, 1994
Family Hexagrammidae Jordan, 1888 (Greenlings)
Subfamily Hexagramminae Jordan, 1888 (greenlings)
Subfamily Pleurogramminae Rutenberg, 1954 (Atka mackerels)
Subfamily Ophiodontinae Jordan & Gilbert, 1883 (lingcods)
Subfamily Oxylebiinae Gill, 1862 (painted greenlings)
Superfamily Trichodontoidea Nazarkin & Voskoboinikova, 2000
Family Trichodontidae Bleeker, 1859 (Sandfishes)
Superfamily Cottoidea Gill, 1889
Family Rhamphocottidae Jordan & Gilbert, 1883 (Grunt sculpins)
Family Jordaniidae Jordan & Evermann, 1898 (Longfin sculpins) (=Scorpaenichthyidae)
Family Cottidae Bonaparte, 1831 (Sculpins)
Family Psychrolutidae Günther, 1861 (Bighead sculpins) (=Bathylutichthyidae)
Family Nautichthyidae Taranetz, 1941 (sailfin sculpins)
Family Hemilepidotidae Jordan & Evermann, 1898 (Irish lords)
Family Hemitripteridae Gill, 1865 (sea ravens)
Family Agonidae Swainson, 1839 (Poachers and sea ravens)
Subfamily Hypsagoninae Gill, 1861 (dragon poachers)
Subfamily Agoninae Swainson, 1839 (hooknose poachers)
Subfamily Anoplagoninae Gill, 1861 (alligator fishes)
Subfamily Podothecinae Gill, 1861 (sturgeon poachers)
Subfamily Brachyopsinae Jordan & Evermann, 1898 (uppermouth poachers)
Subfamily Agonopsinae Vandenberg et al.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Cottoidei” is suborder of fishes. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Cottoidei, suborder and fishes, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q906864. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1835, 1965, 1883 and 1994.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cottoidei” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.