Hexagrammos is a genus of marine ray-finned fishes belonging to the family Hexagrammidae, the greenlings. These fishes are found in the north Pacific Ocean.
Hexagrammos was first proposed as a monospecific genus in 1810 by the German naturalist Tilesius when he described Hexagrammos asper giving its type locality as Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka. Tilesius's original name was subsequently incorrectly changed to H. stelleri and this was the name which became settled on in the literature that followed and this use and practice means it that it is impractical to bring H. asper into common use.[1] The genus is the only genus in the monogeneric subfamily Hexagramminae, within the family Hexagrammidae, part of the suborder Cottoidei within the order Scorpaeniformes.[2]
Hexagrammos is a combination of hexa, meaning "six", and grammos, meaning " line", a reference to the multiple lateral line canals with the fifth, lowest canal being divided to produce six such canals.[3]
The currently recognized species in this genus are:
| Image | Scientific name | Common name | Distribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hexagrammos agrammus (Temminck & Schlegel, 1843) | Spotty-bellied greenling | Japan, the Korean Peninsula and the Yellow Sea | |
| Hexagrammos decagrammus (Pallas, 1810) | kelp greenling | northern Pacific especially around British Columbia and Alaska | |
| Hexagrammos lagocephalus (Pallas, 1810) | rock greenling | Pacific Coast from Alaska's Bering Sea to the coast of southern California. | |
| Hexagrammos octogrammus (Pallas, 1814) | masked greenling | Sea of Okhotsk and northern Japan | |
| Hexagrammos otakii D. S. Jordan & Starks, 1895 | Fat greenling | Japan, the southern Korean Peninsula to the Yellow Sea | |
| Hexagrammos stelleri Tilesius, 1810 | whitespotted greenling | Peter the Great Bay, Russia and the Sea of Japan to Cape Lisburne in the Chukchi Sea, Unimak Island in the Aleutian chain and Oregon, USA. | |