The radiated shanny was first formally described in as Pholis subfurcatus in 1839 by the American naturalist and physician David Humphreys Storer.

[2] In 1896 David Starr Jordan and Barton Warren Evermann placed P. subfurcatus in the monospecific genus Ulvaria.

Many blennies live among this seaweed and when Jordan and Evermann proposed the genus the Stichaeidae was thought to be closely related to the Blennidae.

[6] The radiated shanny is found in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean along the eastern coast of North America from the Strait of Belle Isle in Newfoundland to southern Massachusetts.

Radiated shannies with lengths greater than 60 mm (2.4 in) are nocturnal, a strategy which may go some way to reducing predation by, and competition with, other coastal demersal fishes.