Spotted trunkfish
species of fish
The spotted trunkfish (Lactophrys bicaudalis) is a member of the family Ostraciidae. It lives in reefs throughout the Caribbean, as well as the southwestern Atlantic Ocean. It gets its name from the black spots on its whitish or yellow-golden body. In Caribbean countries, it is colloquially known as the boxfish, cow-fish or shellfish.
Taxonomy
The spotted trunkfish was first formally described as Ostracion bicaudalis in 1758 by Carl Linnaeus in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae with its type locality given as "India". The 5th edition of Fishes of the World classifies the genus Lactophrys within the family Ostraciidae in the suborder Ostracioidea within the order Tetraodontiformes.
Etymology
The spotted trunkfish is a member of the genus Lactophrys, a name which is a compound of lactaria, meaning a "milkcow", and ophrys, meaning "eyebrow", a reference to the spines above the eyes resembling the horns of a cow. Some fishes in this family are known as cowfishes. The specific name, bicaudalis, means "two tailed", a reference to the two spines "below the tail", a mystery because this fish does not have any spines under its tail but there are two spines on either side of the anal fin.
Description
Members of this family are known as boxfishes because they have a hard outer covering consisting of hexagonal plate-like scales fused together into a solid, triangular or box-like carapace.
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This entry incorporates text from “Spotted trunkfish” 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.