- "Bristlemouth" redirects here. This name is also used to refer to some of the related Sternoptychidae, namely the genus Argyripnus.
The
Gonostomatidae are a family of
mesopelagic marine fish, commonly named
bristlemouths,
lightfishes, or
anglemouths. It is a relatively small
family, containing only eight known
genera and 32
species. However, bristlemouths make up for their lack of diversity with numbers:
Cyclothone, with 12 species, is thought to be (along with
Vinciguerria), the most abundant vertebrate genus in the world, numbering in the hundreds of trillions to quadrillions.
