From the Greek ἅλς - salt and φιλέω - love.

Salt-loving forms that prefer to live in waters with a high salt content. Halophiles are able to maintain a relatively constant concentration of osmotically active substances in their body fluids, lower than in the surrounding seawater, through osmoregulation.

Halophiles are mostly marine animals that cannot tolerate salinity below 30 ppm - radiolarians, reef-forming corals, inhabitants of coral reefs and mangroves, echinoderms, cephalopods, many crustaceans, etc. This group also includes organisms living in inland waters with a salinity of 25 to 300 ppm, such as some rotifers, the crayfish Artemia salina, the larvae of the mosquito Aedes togoi and others. A typical halophile is the stickleback.