The starry handfish (''Halieutaea stellata''), starry seabat or minipizza batfish, is species of marine

ray-finned fish Actinopterygii (; ), members of which are known as ray-finned fish or actinopterygians, is a class of bony fish that comprise over 50% of living vertebrate species. They are so called because of their lightly built fins made of webbings of sk ...

belonging to the

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

Ogcocephalidae Ogcocephalidae is a family of anglerfish specifically adapted for a benthic lifestyle of crawling about on the seafloor. Ogcocephalid anglerfish are sometimes referred to as batfishes,continental shelves A continental shelf is a portion of a continent that is submerged under an area of relatively shallow water, known as a shelf sea. Much of these shelves were exposed by drops in sea level during glacial periods. The shelf surrounding an island ...

of the

Indo-Pacific The Indo-Pacific is a vast biogeographic region of Earth. In a narrow sense, sometimes known as the Indo-West Pacific or Indo-Pacific Asia, it comprises the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean, the western and central Pacific Ocean, and the ...

oceans at depths of between 50 and 400 m. They are up to 30 cm long.

Taxonomy

The starry handfish was first formally described as ''Lophius stellatus'' in 1797 by the Norwegian

zoologist Zoology ( , ) is the scientific study of animals. Its studies include the structure, embryology, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct, and how they interact with their ecosystems. Zoology is one ...

Martin Vahl Martin Henrichsen Vahl (10 October 1749 – 24 December 1804) was a Denmark-Norway, Danish-Norwegian botanist, herbalist and zoologist. Biography Martin Vahl was born in Bergen, Norway and attended Bergen Cathedral School. He studied botany at ...

with its type locality given as China. In 1827

Achille Valenciennes Achille Valenciennes (9 August 1794 – 13 April 1865) was a French zoology, zoologist. Valenciennes was born in Paris, and studied under Georges Cuvier. His study of parasitic worms in humans made an important contribution to the study of parasi ...

classified ''L. stellatus'' in the new

monospecific genus In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispe ...

''Halieutaea'', although he did not name its author. The genus ''Halieutaea'' is the

sister group In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree. Definition The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram: Taxon A and ...

to the other two clades, the Indo-Pacific clade and the Eastern Pacific and Western Atlantic clade, of the family Ogcocephalidae. The family Ogcocephalidae is classified in the monotypic

suborder Order () is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy. It is classified between family and class. In biological classification, the order is a taxonomic rank used in the classification of organisms and recognized ...

Ogcocephaloidei Ogcocephalidae is a family of anglerfish specifically adapted for a benthic lifestyle of crawling about on the seafloor. Ogcocephalid anglerfish are sometimes referred to as batfishes,order Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to: * A socio-political or established or existing order, e.g. World order, Ancien Regime, Pax Britannica * Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood ...

Lophiiformes, the anglerfishes in the 5th edition of ''

Fishes of the World ''Fishes of the World'' is a standard reference for the systematics of fishes. It was first written in 1976 by the American ichthyologist Joseph S. Nelson (1937–2011). Now in its fifth edition (2016), the work is a comprehensive overview of t ...

''. Specimens assigned to this species collected in the Red Sea and some parts of the Indian Ocean may be a separate, undescribed species which has been given the common name of Alcock's batfish.

Etymology

The starry handfish has the genus name ''Halieutaea'' which is

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

for " angler" or "fishermam", a reference to the habit of these fishes of resting on the bottom and using their lures to attract prey towards them. The

specific name Specific name may refer to: * in Database management systems, a system-assigned name that is unique within a particular database In taxonomy, either of these two meanings, each with its own set of rules: * Specific name (botany), the two-part (bino ...

, ''stellata'', means "starry", this is an allusion to the spiny tubercles on the upper body which are shape like stars.

Description

The starry handfish has a body which is a wide, flattened disc. The

dorsal Dorsal (from Latin ''dorsum'' ‘back’) may refer to: * Dorsal (anatomy), an anatomical term of location referring to the back or upper side of an organism or parts of an organism * Dorsal, positioned on top of an aircraft's fuselage The fus ...

and

anal fin Fins are moving appendages protruding from the body of fish that interact with water to generate thrust and help the fish swim. Apart from the tail or caudal fin, fish fins have no direct connection with the back bone and are supported o ...

each have 4 soft rays. The tail is shorter than the diameter of the disc. The space between the eyes is wide than the diameter of theyes, there is a depression on the snout where the fishing apparatus is stored, the illicial cavity. The large mouth is located on the front of the head and is not overhung by the snout. The esca is made up of 2 lobes which are not clearly separate, a dorsal flap and a slender, ventral fringe. The

pectoral fin Fins are moving appendages protruding from the body of fish that interact with water to generate thrust and help the fish aquatic locomotion, swim. Apart from the tail or caudal fin, fish fins have no direct connection with the vertebral column ...

s stick out from the posterior margin of the disc while the pelvic fins are under the disc. The overall colour is pinkish to red marked with numer spouts which form irregular crescents over the body. The fins are red, sometimes with black margins. The upper body is covered in robust, simple spines, the majority of these have 4 roots. The spines on the rear margin of the disc and on the tail have 4 or 5 points. The skin on the underside is covered in many spines. The starry batfish has a maximum published

total length Fish measurement is the measuring of individual fish and various parts of their anatomies, for data used in many areas of ichthyology, including taxonomy and fishery biology. Overall length Standard length (SL) is the length of a fish measured f ...

of >

Distribution and habitat

The starry handfish has a wide distribution in the eastern Indian Ocean and Western Pacific Ocean, they occur from the

Sea of Japan The Sea of Japan is the marginal sea between the Japanese archipelago, Sakhalin, the Korean Peninsula, and the mainland of the Russian Far East. The Japanese archipelago separates the sea from the Pacific Ocean. Like the Mediterranean Sea, it ...

and southern Japan in the north, south to Australia and northern New Zealand, east to

New Caledonia New Caledonia ( ; ) is a group of islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean, southwest of Vanuatu and east of Australia. Located from Metropolitan France, it forms a Overseas France#Sui generis collectivity, ''sui generis'' collectivity of t ...

and Vanuatu to

French Polynesia French Polynesia ( ; ; ) is an overseas collectivity of France and its sole #Governance, overseas country. It comprises 121 geographically dispersed islands and atolls stretching over more than in the Pacific Ocean, South Pacific Ocean. The t ...

. In Australia this species is found from northern

Western Australia Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...

east to

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

and south as far as

Newcastle, New South Wales Newcastle, also commonly referred to as Greater Newcastle ( ; ), is a large Metropolitan area, metropolitan area and the second-most-populous such area of New South Wales, Australia. It includes the cities of City of Newcastle, Newcastle and Ci ...

. Records of this species from Indonesia. the

Andaman Sea The Andaman Sea (historically also known as the Burma Sea) is a marginal sea of the northeastern Indian Ocean bounded by the coastlines of Myanmar and Thailand along the Gulf of Martaban and the west side of the Malay Peninsula, and separated f ...

and the western Indian Ocean probably refer to an, as yet, undescribed species. The starry batfish as a

benthic fish Demersal fish, also known as groundfish, live and feed on or near the bottom of seas or lakes (the demersal zone).Walrond Carl . "Coastal fish - Fish of the open sea floor"Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Updated 2 March 2009 They oc ...

which occurs at depths between on the

continental shelf A continental shelf is a portion of a continent that is submerged under an area of relatively shallow water, known as a shelf sea. Much of these shelves were exposed by drops in sea level during glacial periods. The shelf surrounding an islan ...

and

margin Margin may refer to: Physical or graphical edges *Margin (typography), the white space that surrounds the content of a page * Continental margin, the zone of the ocean floor that separates the thin oceanic crust from thick continental crust *Leaf ...

Utilisation

The starry handfish is used in

traditional Chinese medicine Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is an alternative medicine, alternative medical practice drawn from traditional medicine in China. A large share of its claims are pseudoscientific, with the majority of treatments having no robust evidence ...

References

* Tony Ayling & Geoffrey Cox, ''Collins Guide to the Sea Fishes of New Zealand'', (William Collins Publishers Ltd, Auckland, New Zealand 1982) File:Naturalis Biodiversity Center - RMNH.ART.537 - Halieutaea stellata - Yūshi Ishizaki - Cock Blomhoff Collection.jpg, Halieutaea stellata by Kawahara Keiga, around 1825. File:Halieutaea stellata by DaijuAzuma.jpg, Takeshima Aquarium, Aichi pref. Japan, 2015 {{Taxonbar, from=Q653098 Starry handfish Fish described in 1797 Taxa named by Martin Vahl