''Thalassophryne maculosa'', the Cano toadfish, is a species of toadfish which is common along the Caribbean coasts of South America from Colombia to

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...

and Venezuela. It occurs on the sandy bottoms of reef flats, lagoons, and seaward edges of reefs where it sits partially buried in the substrate. It is a venomous species with the venom being delivered through spines and wounds from the spines have been known to cause severe symptoms of pain and illness that may persist for up to a week. A study of the

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...

of ''Batrachus uranoscopus'', said to be a freshwater toadfish from Madagascar, in the ''Muséum national d’Histoire Naturelle'' in Paris found that it was most probably a misslabelled specimen of ''Thalassophryne maculosa'' and that subsequent records of ''Batrachus uranoscopus'' were attributable to ''

Allenbatrachus meridionalis ''Allenbatrachus'' is a genus of toadfishes found in the Indian and western Pacific Oceans. The generic name honours the Humboldt State University ichthyologist George Allen (1923-2011), who introduced David Greenfield, who coined the name, to ...

'', a species found in Madagascar. ''T. maculosa'' is 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 ...

of the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

Thalassophryne ''Thalassophryne'' is a genus of toadfishes found in the western Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of ...

'', the generic name translates from Greek as "sea toad" while the

specific name Specific name may refer to: * in Database management systems, a system-assigned name that is unique within a particular database In taxonomy, either of these two meanings, each with its own set of rules: * Specific name (botany), the two-part (bino ...

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

for "spotted".

References

Batrachoididae Fish described in 1861 Taxa named by Albert Günther {{Batrachoidiformes-stub