Some are semianadromous, spawning in the ocean near estuaries so the eggs and young will be taken into lower-salinity environments on the tides.

[3] These fish are carnivorous, with diet assessments of a few different species finding mysids such as Mysidopsis coelhoi, copepods such as Acartia lilljeborgii and Pseudodiaptomus acutus, sergestoid prawns such as Peisos petrunkevitchi, amphipods, chaetognaths, isopods, cumaceans, ostracods, ascidian tunicates, nematodes, polychaetes, fish, and bivalves, or at least their siphons.

[3] Stellifer was first proposed as a monospecific genus in 1817 by Lorenz Oken, based on Les Stelliferes of Georges Cuvier of 1816.

The only species then in the genus was Bodianus stellifer[1] which had been described in 1789 by Marcus Elieser Bloch with its type locality being given as the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, although this is likely to be Suriname.

[8] However, the 5th edition of Fishes of the World does not recognise tribes or subfamilies within the Sciaenidae which it places in the order Acanthuriformes.