Groupers and sea basses are ambush carnivores of the reef
Serranidae is a perciform family of marine fishes once counted near four hundred fifty species in sixty-five genera, including many groupers and sea basses, though revisions keep shifting the list. Robust bodies, big mouths, and cheek spines mark the look.
Several rows of sharp teeth usually include oversized canines. Ten dorsal spines and seven anal soft rays with unserrated spines help diagnose the family. All are carnivores that eat fish and crustaceans, lurking in reef cover and darting out at passing prey, and their bright patterns probably work as disruptive camouflage, much like a tiger's stripes.
Those revisions have been sweeping. Groupers, soapfishes and anthias were carved out, leaving the family far less species-rich than before, though its members still live in tropical and subtropical seas around the world. For decades it held three subfamilies, Anthiadinae, Epinephelinae and Serraninae, until a 2007 DNA study by W. L. Smith and M. T. Craig found serranines and anthiadines nesting beside some scorpionfish relatives such as Ablabys and Hoplichthys, with the groupers falling outside that cluster.
Later work kept all three lineages among the percoid fishes and then raised them to full families, Epinephelidae, Grammistidae and Anthiadidae, a split now accepted by several authorities including the World Register of Marine Species. Even the fossil Paleoserranus, once filed here, now looks like an early perciform instead. Within the family, genera are told apart by counting the soft rays in the dorsal fin.
Many species are protogynous hermaphrodites, starting life as females and turning male later. They release huge numbers of eggs, and the larvae drift as plankton, carried by currents until they settle into adult populations.
Source: Serranidae
