Abalistes

Abalistes is a small genus of marine ray-finned fishes belonging to the family Balistidae, the triggerfishes. These triggerfishes are found in the Indo-Pacific and eastern Atlantic. This genus contains two recognised species.

==Taxonomy== Abalistes was first proposed as a genus in 1906 by the American ichthyologists David Starr Jordan and Alvin Seale with Leiurus macrophthalmus the type species. L. macropthalmus was originally described by William Swainson with Leiurus being proposed as a subgenus of Capriscus, i.e. Balistes, but he used the same name in the same book for a subgenus of the stickleback genus Gasterosteus, meaning that it was unavailable for the triggerfish. This genus belongs to the family Balistidae which is classified within the suborder Balistoidei.