Splendid hawkfish
species of fish
The splendid hawkfish (Notocirrhitus splendens), also known as mottled hawkfish, is a species of marine ray-finned fish, a hawkfish belonging to the family Cirrhitidae. It is found on tropical reefs of the Pacific Ocean.
Taxonomy
The splendid hawkfish was first formally described in 1889 as Cirrhitichthys splendens by the Irish born Australian ichthyologist and herpetologist James Douglas Ogilby with the type locality given as Lord Howe Island. In 2001 John Ernest Randall placed it in a new monotypic genus, Notocirrhitus. The genus name is a compound of noto meaning "south" a reference to the more southerly range of this species in comparison to other hawkfishes and Cirrhitus the type genus of the family Cirrhitidae. The specific name splendens means "splendid" or "superb", referring to the bright colouration of this fish.
Description
The splendid hawkfish has a moderately deep body and a slightly elongate snout. There are 25 or more small serrations on the upper margin of the preoperculum and the gill membrane across the throat does not have scales. The dorsal fin has 10 spines and 12 soft rays while the anal fin has 3 spines and 6 soft rays. The first dorsal fin ray is elongated.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2792425. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1889 and 2001.
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This entry incorporates text from “Splendid hawkfish” 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.