Nomeus Cuvier, 1816
Small fishes with an elongate body, flexible, compressed and with a long rather slender and tapered caudal peduncle. Silvery and dark-blue mottled colour pattern, becoming uniformly dark in large specimens. Mouth small, end of maxillary under or before anterior border of eye. Small slightly curved teeth spaced in a single series in the jaws; recurved teeth on the vomer and in single series on the palatines and basibranchials. Longest dorsal fin spine about equal in length to longest dorsal finray; 1 or 2 anal fin spines; pelvic fin origin under or before pectoral fin base, the fins themselves long and fan-like, black, attached for their entire length to the abdomen and folding into a long deep groove; relative length of pelvic fin decreasing markedly with growth; relative length of pectoral fin increasing markedly. Scales small, cycloid, very thin and easily shed, extending onto bases of dorsal and anal fins; tubed scales of lateral line high, following dorsal profile and ending, in all but the largest specimens, under the last dorsal finray; scales on the top of head extending forward to the level of the anterior border of the eye. Snout naked, cheeks scaled.
Cosmopolitan in tropical and subtropical seas. As yet unrecorded from the eastern Atlantic, but to be expected; absent from the Mediterranean.
Species 1.
Recent revision: Haedrich (1967).
Species of this genus in the program:
Nomeus gronovii