Fourspot butterflyfish

Four-spotted Butterflyfish
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Perciformes
Family: Chaetodontidae
Genus: Chaetodon (but see text)
Subgenus: Exornator
Species: C. quadrimaculatus
Binomial name
Chaetodon quadrimaculatus
J. E. Gray, 1831

The Four-spotted Butterflyfish or fourspot butterflyfish (Chaetodon quadrimaculatus) is a species of butterflyfish (family Chaetodontidae) found in the Pacific Ocean from the Ryukyus, Ogasawara (Bonin) Islands and Taiwan to the Hawaiian, Marquesan, and Pitcairn islands, south to the Samoan and Austral Islands and the Marianas and Marshall Islands in Micronesia.[1]

It is a quite distinct species, but most closely related to the Speckled Butterflyfish (C. citrinellus). Together they are basal in the subgenus Exornator, and might be intermediate between the core group of this subgenus and the species of the Rhombochaetodon (or Roaops) lineage. If that is correct, the latter would require to be merged into Exornator. If the genus Chaetodon is split up, Exornator might become a subgenus of Lepidochaetodon.[2]

Footnotes

  1. FishBase [2008]
  2. Fessler & Westneat (2007), Hsu et al. (2007)

References

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