Cociella
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Cociella | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Crocodile Flathead (C. crocodila) | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Actinopterygii |
| Order: | Perciformes |
| Family: | Platycephalidae |
| Genus: | Cociella Whitley, 1940 |
| Type species | |
| Platycephalus crocodilus | |
| Synonyms[1] | |
| |
Cociella is a genus of marine ray-finned fishes belonging to the family Platycephalidae, the flatheads. These fishes are found in the Indo-Pacific region.
Cociella was first proposed as a genus in 1940 by the Australian ichthyologist Gilbert Percy Whitley as a replacement for Cocius which had been put forward by David Starr Jordan and Carl Leavitt Hubbs in 1925 but this name was unavailable as it was preoccupied by the antlion genus Cocius.,[1] described by the Spanish entomologist Longinos Navás in 1921.[2] Jordan and Hubbs designated Platycephalus crocodilus, a species described by Georges Cuvier in 1829 but no types are known,[3] as the type species of their genus and Whitley retained it as the type species of the replacement.[1] The genus is classified within the family Playcephalidae, the flatheads.[4] The name of the genus, Cociella, is a diminutive form of the original name coined by Jordan and Hubbs which is thought to be a latinisation of the Japanese name for flatheads and dragonets.[5]
Species
There are currently six recognised species in this genus:[4][3]
- Cociella crocodilus (G. Cuvier, 1829) (Crocodile flathead)
- Cociella heemstrai L. W. Knapp, 1996
- Cociella hutchinsi L. W. Knapp, 1996 (Brownmargin flathead)
- Cociella martingomoni Imamura & Aungtonya, 2020 (Martin Gomon's flathead)
- Cociella punctata (G. Cuvier, 1829) (Spotted flathead)
- Cociella somaliensis L. W. Knapp, 1996
C. punctata was regarded as a synonym of C. crocodilus, and C. heemstrai, C. hutchinsi and C. somaliensis were previously regarded as geographic populations of C. crocodilus.[6]