The Platycephalidae are a

family Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...

of marine

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 li ...

, most commonly referred to as flatheads. They are relatives of the popular

lionfish ''Pterois'' is a genus of venomous marine fish, commonly known as lionfish, native to the Indo-Pacific. Also called firefish, turkeyfish, tastyfish, or butterfly-cod, it is characterized by conspicuous warning coloration with red, white, crea ...

, belonging to the order

Scorpaeniformes The Scorpaeniformes are a diverse order of ray-finned fish, including the lionfishes and sculpins, but have also been called the Scleroparei. It is one of the five largest orders of bony fishes by number of species, with over 1,320. They are ...

Taxonomy

Platycephalidae was first proposed as a family in 1839 by the English naturalist

William John Swainson William John Swainson FLS, FRS (8 October 1789 – 6 December 1855), was an English ornithologist, malacologist, conchologist, entomologist and artist. Life Swainson was born in Dover Place, St Mary Newington, London, the eldest son of ...

. The 5th edition of ''

Fishes of the World ''Fishes of the World'' by the American ichthyologist Joseph S. Nelson (1937–2011) is a standard reference for fish systematics. Now in its fifth edition (2016), the work is a comprehensive overview of the diversity and classification of the ...

'' classifies this family within the

suborder Order ( la, ordo) is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy. It is classified between family and class. In biological classification, the order is a taxonomic rank used in the classification of organisms and ...

Platycephaloidei Platycephaloidei is a suborder of ray-finned fishes, part of the order Scorpaeniformes, and includes the flatheads, ghost flatheads and sea robins. Taxonomy Platycephaloidei was first recognised and named as a taxonomic grouping in 1943 by th ...

in the

order Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to: * Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood * Heterarchy, a system of organization wherein the elements have the potential to be ranked a number of d ...

. Other authorities differ and do not consider the Scorpaeniformes to be a valid order because the

Perciformes Perciformes (), also called the Percomorpha or Acanthopteri, is an order or superorder of ray-finned fish. If considered a single order, they are the most numerous order of vertebrates, containing about 41% of all bony fish. Perciformes means ...

is not

monophyletic In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gro ...

without the taxa within the Scorpaeniformes being included within it. These authorities consider the Platycephalidae to belong to the

, along with the families Bembridae, Parabembridae,

Hoplichthyidae ''Hoplichthys'', the ghost flatheads, is a genus of marine ray-finned fishes native to the Indian and Pacific Oceans. This genus is the only member of the family Hoplichthyidae. Taxonomy Hoplichthys was first proposed as a monotypic genus in 18 ...

and Plectrogeniidae within the Perciformes.

Genera

Platycephalidae has the following genera classified within it: Platycephalidae has been divided into as many as 5

subfamilies In biological classification, a subfamily (Latin: ', plural ') is an auxiliary (intermediate) taxonomic rank, next below family but more inclusive than genus. Standard nomenclature rules end subfamily botanical names with "-oideae", and zoologi ...

by some authors but Fishes of the World does not recognise subfamilies but does state that some authors recognise two subfamilies. The two subfamilies are Platycephalalinae, containing ''Elates'' and ''Platycephalus'', and Onigociinae, containing the remaining genera. These two groupings are thought to have become divergent in the

Eocene The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), Era. The name ''Eocene' ...

with the Platycephalinae being predominantly temperate and Onigociinae, being predominantly tropical. The basal Platycephalinae species are confined to southern Australia and the more derived taxa have diversified in the tropical Indo-West Pacific. The genus '' Sorsogona'' is recognised by

Fishbase FishBase is a global species database of fish species (specifically finfish). It is the largest and most extensively accessed online database on adult finfish on the web.

but, apparently, it does not include the

type species In 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 species that contains the biological type specimen ...

, ''Sorsogona serrulata'', as a species within it. ''

Catalog of Fishes Catalog of Fishes is a comprehensive on-line database and reference work on the scientific names of fish species and genera. It is global in its scope and is hosted by the California Academy of Sciences. It has been compiled and is continuously up ...

'' treats this genus as a

synonym A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are all ...

of '' Rogadius'' but classifies all the species in '' Ratabulus'', including the type species, which it treats as a synonym of '' Ratabulus tuberculatus''.

Etymology

The name of the family is derived from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

words ''platy'', meaning "flat", and ''kephale'' for "head".

Description

Platycephalids are small to medium-sized fish. Most species are small, reaching an average of 10 cm in length. However, a few species in the genus ''

Platycephalus ''Platycephalus'' is a genus of mostly marine, demersal ray-finned fish belonging to the family Platycephalidae. They are found in the eastern Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean and western Pacific Ocean. Taxonomy ''Platycephalus'' was first pro ...

'' are known to grow up to over a in length. Their most distinctive characteristic is the flattened shape of their heads. While the rest of their bodies is shaped similarly to other fish that inhabit the areas they frequent, their heads are triangle-shaped and dorsoventrally depressed, giving them the shape of a trowel or an artist's spatula. Their eyes are situated on the upper surface, in accordance with their bottom-dwelling lifestyle. They possess two complete

dorsal fin A dorsal fin is a fin located on the back of most marine and freshwater vertebrates within various taxa of the animal kingdom. Many species of animals possessing dorsal fins are not particularly closely related to each other, though through conv ...

s, the first one supported by six to 9 strong spines.

Distribution and habitat

Platycephalidae can be found naturally in coastal waters throughout the

Indo Indo may refer to: * Indo-, a prefix indicating India or the Indian Subcontinent * Indonesia, a country in Asia ** INDO LINES, callsign of Indonesian Airlines ** Indo people, people of mixed European and Indonesian ancestry ** Indo cuisine, fusion ...

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

. A few species have been caught in the eastern

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the e ...

, having traveled there from the

Red Sea The Red Sea ( ar, البحر الأحمر - بحر القلزم, translit=Modern: al-Baḥr al-ʾAḥmar, Medieval: Baḥr al-Qulzum; or ; Coptic: ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϩⲁϩ ''Phiom Enhah'' or ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϣⲁⲣⲓ ''Phiom ǹšari''; T ...

through the

Suez Canal The Suez Canal ( arz, قَنَاةُ ٱلسُّوَيْسِ, ') is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia. The long canal is a popular ...

Biology

Flatheads are mostly marine

demersal The demersal zone is the part of the sea or ocean (or deep lake) consisting of the part of the water column near to (and significantly affected by) the seabed and the benthos. The demersal zone is just above the benthic zone and forms a layer of ...

fish, often resting directly on the

seabed The seabed (also known as the seafloor, sea floor, ocean floor, and ocean bottom) is the bottom of the ocean. All floors of the ocean are known as 'seabeds'. The structure of the seabed of the global ocean is governed by plate tectonics. Most of ...

, sometimes partially buried in sand or mud. They can be found in a wide range of depths, ranging from 10 m to the edge of the continental shelf at depths of about . Flatheads are

carnivorous A carnivore , or meat-eater (Latin, ''caro'', genitive ''carnis'', meaning meat or "flesh" and ''vorare'' meaning "to devour"), is an animal or plant whose food and energy requirements derive from animal tissues (mainly muscle, fat and other sof ...

, feeding on small fish and

crustaceans Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean group ...

. They lie in wait buried by sand, with only their eyes poking out from the substrate. When prospective prey walks or swims close to the platycephalid's head, the flathead strikes rapidly, engulfing the prey in its large mouth. As flatheads are

ambush predator Ambush predators or sit-and-wait predators are carnivorous animals that capture or trap prey via stealth, luring or by (typically instinctive) strategies utilizing an element of surprise. Unlike pursuit predators, who chase to capture prey us ...

s they are expected to be relatively sedentary and not move large distances as adults. However, recent research has shown that part of the population of some flathead species makes long distance movements or spawning migrations.

Fisheries

Active commercial fisheries are geared towards members of the family. In

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

, some species are the subject of experimental

aquaculture Aquaculture (less commonly spelled aquiculture), also known as aquafarming, is the controlled cultivation ("farming") of aquatic organisms such as fish, crustaceans, mollusks, algae and other organisms of value such as aquatic plants (e.g. lot ...

programs. Flatheads are commonly caught on rod and line. The larger species are considered game fish.

References

* *

External links

*
Photos of several species of Crocodilefishes
{{Taxonbar, from=Q1072599 Platycephaloidei Fish of the Pacific Ocean Ray-finned fish families Taxa named by William John Swainson