Aplodactylus

Aplodactylus is a genus of marine ray-finned fishes, commonly known as marblefishes or sea carps. It is the only genus in the monogeneric family, Aplodactylidae. The fishes in this genus are found in the south eastern Indian Ocean and the southern Pacific Ocean.

==Taxonomy== Aplodactylus was described in 1832 by the French zoologist Achille Valenciennes with Aplodactylus punctatus, which Valenciennes described from the type specimen collected from Valparaiso in Chile, as its only species, being the type species by monotypy. The family had previously contained two genera with the monospecific Crinodon being recognised as a synonym of Aplodactylus by Barry C. Russell in 2000. The family, Aplodactylidae was created as Haplodactylidae by the German born British ichthyologist Albert Günther in 1859, the Dutch ichthyologist Pieter Bleeker corrected that to its current name later the same year. The family is regarded as part of the superfamily Cirrhitoidea, which is placed within the order Perciformes in the 5th Edition of Fishes of the World, however other authorities place this clade within a new order within the wider Percomorpha, Centrarchiformes. The genus name is a compound of aploe meaning "single" or "simple" and daktylos meaning "finger", a reference to the unbranched lower pectoral fin rays of the type species.