''Trixiphichthys'', is a

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 ...

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 ...

Triacanthidae Triacanthidae, the triplespines or tripodfishes, is a family of marine ray-finned fishes belonging to the order Tetraodontiformes, which also includes the pufferfishes, boxfishes, filefishes and related groups. The family is made up of four exta ...

, the triplespines or tripodfishes. The only species in this genus is ''Trixiphichthys weberi'', the blacktip tripodfish or longnosed tripodfish. This taxon is found in the

Indo-West 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 s ...

region.

Taxonomy

''Trixiphichthys'' was first proposed as a

in 1941 by the British

ichthyologist Ichthyology is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish, including bony fish (Osteichthyes), cartilaginous fish (Chondrichthyes), and jawless fish (Agnatha). According to FishBase, 35,800 species of fish had been described as of March 2 ...

Alec Fraser-Brunner Alec Frederick Fraser-Brunner (6 April 1906 – 17 Sept 1986) was a British ichthyologist. His career included work with the Colonial Office, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and as the curator of the Van Kleef Aquarium in Singapore and the ...

with ''Triacanthus weberi'' designated as its

type species In International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature, zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the spe ...

. ''T. weberi'' was first formally described in 1910 by Banawari Lal Chaudhuri with its type locality given as

Gopalpur, Odisha Gopalpur is a coastal town and a Notified Area Council on the Bay of Bengal coast in Ganjam district in the southern part of Odisha, India. It's a port town with beautiful sea beach. Gopalpur is around 15 km from Berhampur. Demographics ...

. This genus is classified within the family Triacanthida and, in 1968, James C. Tyler classified this family within the suborder Triacanthoidei alongside the Triacanthodidae. The fifth 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 ...

'' classifies the Triacanthoidei as a suborder of the

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 ...

Tetraodontiformes Tetraodontiformes (), also known as the Plectognathi, is an order of ray-finned fishes which includes the pufferfishes and related taxa. This order has been classified as a suborder of the order Perciformes, although recent studies have found ...

Etymology

''Trixiphichthys'', the genus name, is derived from the word ''xiphos'', meaning "sword", and prefixes it with ''tri-'', meaning "three" and suffixes it with ''-ichthys'', the Greek word for fish. Fraser-Brunner did not explain what this alluded to but it is presumed to allude to the large first spine on the

dorsal fin A dorsal fin is a fin on the back of most marine and freshwater vertebrates. Dorsal fins have evolved independently several times through convergent evolution adapting to marine environments, so the fins are not all homologous. They are found ...

and the two large

pelvic fin Pelvic fins or ventral fins are paired fins located on the ventral (belly) surface of fish, and are the lower of the only two sets of paired fins (the other being the laterally positioned pectoral fins). The pelvic fins are homologous to the hi ...

spines. 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 ...

honours the German-born Dutch ichthyologist

Max Carl Wilhelm Weber Max Carl Wilhelm Weber van Bosse or Max Wilhelm Carl Weber (5 December 1852 – 7 February 1937) was a German- Dutch zoologist and biogeographer. Weber studied at the University of Bonn, then at the Humboldt University in Berlin with the z ...

, who helped Chaudhuri with notes in his original description.

Description

''Trixiphichthys'' has the scaly ventral surface of the

pelvis The pelvis (: pelves or pelvises) is the lower part of an Anatomy, anatomical Trunk (anatomy), trunk, between the human abdomen, abdomen and the thighs (sometimes also called pelvic region), together with its embedded skeleton (sometimes also c ...

which is wider to the front and tapers to a distinct point. The distance between the eye to the upper end of the gill cover is short, just greater than the duiameter of the eye. It has a long snout which has aclear concave dorsal profile and is slightly compressed. The lower thisr of the first dorsal fin spine is paler than the upper two thirds. This species has a maximum

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

''Trixiphichthys'' is found in the eastern Indian Ocean and western Pacific Ocean in the

Bay of Bengal The Bay of Bengal is the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean. Geographically it is positioned between the Indian subcontinent and the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese peninsula, located below the Bengal region. Many South Asian and Southe ...

, the

South China Sea The South China Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean. It is bounded in the north by South China, in the west by the Indochinese Peninsula, in the east by the islands of Taiwan island, Taiwan and northwestern Philippines (mainly Luz ...

, the

Gulf of Thailand The Gulf of Thailand (), historically known as the Gulf of Siam (), is a shallow inlet adjacent to the southwestern South China Sea, bounded between the southwestern shores of the Indochinese Peninsula and the northern half of the Malay Peninsula. ...

and Indonesia. They are found at depths down to over san and mud flats in coastal waters.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q130132 Triacanthidae Taxa named by Alec Fraser-Brunner Monotypic marine fish genera