Echiostoma barbatum, the only recognized species of the genus, is a broadly distributed predator of meso- and bathypelagics zones in tropical and subtropical latitudes of all major oceans. Several species names, all junior synyonyms, have been applied to this species, the authors often misled by sexual dimorphism and ontogenetic variation in morphology, particularly the hyoid barbal and postorbital photophore (Krueger and Gibbs, 1966).
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Body moderately long, its depth less than 10 times in SL. Head with short, blunt, rounded snout; lower jaw not longer than upper jaw, not curved strongly upward. Barbel shorter than head, up to about of head length (or 16% SL), its tip changing with growth from a large and a small bulb with a distal group of filaments in small specimens to a slender, tapering end, lacking bulbs and with filaments often along its sides, as well as at the tip. Pectoral fin with one long ray distinctly separated from three short rays, all unbranched distally and without lumps of luminous material; pelvic fins low on body, their insertions close together near mid-ventral line; bases of dorsal and anal fins about equally long their origins approximately opposed; no dorsal adipose fin. Photophores in ventral row between pectoral fin and pelvic fin insertions (PV) 25–28; post-orbital luminous organ large, half as long as, to considerably longer than, eye diameter, more or less triangular in shape; no pre-orbital ol sub-orbital organ; no large patches of luminous material on head behinc eye. Color of head and body black, no pale loops or lines on flanks.
Widespread in the Atlantic from about 36° N to 40° S, including Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean; also, Indian and Pacific Oceans.
Meso- to bathypelagic
Gibbs RH, Jr. 1984. Melanostomiidae. In: Whitehead PJP, Bauchot M-L, Hureau J-C, Nielsen J, Tortonese E, editors. Fishes of the North-eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Paris: UNESCO. p 341–365.
Krueger WH, Gibbs RH, Jr. 1996. Growth changes and sexual dimorphism in the stomiatoid fish Echiostoma barbatum. Copeia 1996(1):43-49.
To almost 37 cm.
Off Madeira, eastern Atlantic.
Holotype: BMNH 1917.7.14.82.
