Barchin scorpionfish
species of fish
The barchin scorpionfish (Sebastapistes strongia) is a species of marine ray-finned fish belonging to the family Scorpaenidae, the scorpionfishes. It comes from the Indo-Pacific. The species is commonly seen in areas with mixed sand and rubble in reef flats, shallow lagoons, and channels.
Taxonomy
The barchin scorpionfish was first formally described as Scorpaena strongia in 1829 by the French zoologist Georges Cuvier with the type locality given as Kosrae in the Caroline Islands in the Federated States of Micronesia. Cuvier described the species Scorpaena laniara in the same publication but S. strongia is accepted as the senior synonym through widespread usage and is the valid name for this taxon. When the American ichthyologist Theodore Gill described the genus Sebastapistes in 1877, he included 3 species within it but did not designate a type species; in 1898 David Starr Jordan and Barton Warren Evermann designated Scorpaena strongia as the type species. The specific name strongia refers to the type locality of Kosrae, which used to be called Strong's Island.
Description
The barchin scorpionfish has 12 spines and 8 or 9 soft rays in its dorsal fin and 3 spines and 5 soft rays in its anal fin. This species has 2 lachrymal spines. It has a maximum published total length of 9.5 cm (3.7 in).
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This entry incorporates text from “Barchin scorpionfish” 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.