Tentacled flathead
species of fish
The tentacled flathead (Papilloculiceps longiceps), also known as the Indian Ocean crocodilefish, Madagascar flathead or longhead flathead, is a species of marine ray-finned fish belonging to the family Platycephalidae, the flatheads. This species is in the western Indian Ocean, including the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, having invaded as a Lessepsian migrant through the Suez Canal. It is the only species in the monotypic genus Papilloculiceps.
Taxonomy
The tentacled flathead was first formally described as Platycephalus longiceps by the French zoologist Georges Cuvier in 1829 from specimens collected by Ehrenberg at Massawa in Eritrea. In 1873 the French zoologist Henri Émile Sauvage described a new species Platycephalus grandidieri from Madagascar and in 1956 the American zoologist Henry Weed Fowler and the Israeli ichthyologist Heinz Steinitz proposed a new monotypic genus, Papilloculiceps, with Sauvage's Platycephalus grandidieri as its type species. P. grandidieri is now considered to be a junior synonym of Cuvier's P. longiceps. This genus is classified within the family Playtcephalidae, the flatheads which the 5th edition of Fishes of the World classifies within the suborder Platycephaloidei in the order Scorpaeniformes.
Etymology
The genus name Papilloculiceps is a combination of papilla ("nipple") and oculus ("eye"), a reference to the small and inconspicuous flattened papilla on the upper surface of the eyeball. The specific name means "long head" and may refer to the flattened, crocodile-like shape of the species' head.
Description
The tentacled flathead has an elongate body with a depressed head with 5 prominent nuchal spines.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tentacled flathead” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.