''Canthigaster coronata'', commonly called the crowned toby, is a species of

pufferfish Tetraodontidae is a family of primarily marine and estuarine fish of the order Tetraodontiformes. The family includes many familiar species variously called pufferfish, puffers, balloonfish, blowfish, blowies, bubblefish, globefish, swellfis ...

endemic to the

Hawaiian Islands The Hawaiian Islands ( haw, Nā Mokupuni o Hawai‘i) are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, and numerous smaller islets in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some from the island of Hawaii in the south to northernmost Kur ...

. It occasionally makes its way into the aquarium trade.

Description

The crowned toby grows to a size of 14 cm in length. Its back has three dark brown saddles that may have reminded Hawaiians of lava flows, hence the species being known by its Hawaiian name pu'u olai, meaning "cinder cone". Yellow dots cover much of the whitish bodies, while blue and yellow lines radiate from their eyes.

Related species

'' Canthigaster cyanospilota'' and '' C. axiologus'' were once synonymized with ''C. coronata'' to give the crowned toby an Indo-Pacific distribution, but Randall et al. (2008) found ''C. cyanospilota'' and ''C. axiologa'' to sufficiently distinct from ''C. coronata'' to be revalidated.Randall, J.E., J.T. Williams and L.A. Rocha, 2008. The Indo-Pacific tetraodontid fish Canthigaster coronata, a complex of three species. Smithiana, Publ. Aquatic Biodiv. Bull. 9:3-13.

References

External links

* * coronata Fish described in 1875 {{Tetraodontiformes-stub