''Lagocephalus lunaris,'' also known as the lunartail puffer, is a species of

fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of ...

in the family

Tetraodontidae 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 ...

. It lives in areas in the Indo-Pacific, and its habitat is areas in coastal marine waters, at depths of up to 150 meters, in sandy bottoms, coastal reefs,

estuaries An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environmen ...

and

mangrove A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows in coastal saline or brackish water. The term is also used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves are taxonomically diverse, as a result of convergent evolution in severa ...

s. This fish is listed as

least concern A least-concern species is a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. T ...

, due to it overlapping many marine protected areas. It has a maximum length of 45 centimeters. It eats

marine invertebrates Marine invertebrates are the invertebrates that live in marine habitats. Invertebrate is a blanket term that includes all animals apart from the vertebrate members of the chordate phylum. Invertebrates lack a vertebral column, and some have ev ...

as its food source, and contains poison that makes it dangerous to consume.

Endoparasites Parasitism is a close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or inside another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life. The entomologist E. O. Wilson has ...

of the lunartail puffer include '' Angusticaecum tetrodonti'', '' Bianium arabicum'', '' Bianium plicitum'', ''

Caligus laminatus ''Caligus'' is a genus of sea louse, sea lice in the family Caligidae. The species are parasites of marine fishes and could be Vector (epidemiology), vectors of viruses. , the World Register of Marine Species includes the following species: *'' ...

'', ''

Maculifer indicus ''Maculifer'' is a genus of Trematoda, trematodes in the Family (biology), family Opecoelidae. Species *''Maculifer dayawanensis'' Shen & Tong, 1990Shen, J. W. & Tong, Y. Y. (1990). Studies on the digenetic trematodes of fishes from the Daya Ba ...

'', '' Neodiploproctodaeum karachiense'', '' Notoporus stunkardi'', and ''

Opistholebes amplicoelus ''Opistholebes'' is a genus of trematodes in the family Opecoelidae. Species *'' Opistholebes adcotylophorus'' Manter, 1947Manter, H. W. (1947). The digenetic trematodes of Tortugas, Florida. ''American Midland Naturalist'', 38(2), 257–416. * ...

''.

References

Marine fish of Australia Fish of India Fish of Indonesia Fish of China Fish of Vietnam Fish of Japan Least concern biota of Australia Least concern biota of Asia Least concern biota of Africa lunartail puffer {{Tetraodontiformes-stub