Comephorus

Comephorus, known as the golomyankas or Baikal oilfish, are a genus comprising two species of peculiar sculpin fishes endemic to Lake Baikal in Russia. Comephorus is the only genus in the subfamily Comephorinae. Golomyankas are pelagic fishes and the main food source for the Baikal seal.

==Taxonomy== Comephorus was first proposed as a monospecific genus in 1800 by the French naturalist and politician Bernard Germain de Lacépède with Callionymus baikalensis as its only species. The 5th edition of Fishes of the World places this genus in the monotypic subfamily Comephorinae within the family Cottidae, the typical sculpins. Other authorities have used phylogenetic studies which have found that Baikal sculpins that were classified in the subfamilies Comephorinae and Abyssocottinae by Fishes of the World radiated from an ancestor which was likely to be within the genus Cottus and that the classification of the Baikal sculpins in a different taxon from Cottus was paraphyletic.