Hoplichthys

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 1829 by the French zoologist Georges Cuvier when he described its type species, and only species at that time, H. langsdorfi from Japan. In 1873 the German naturalist Johann Jakob Kaup considered that the genus Hoplichthys was so different from other "flathead" taxa that it merited placing in a monogeneric family, the Hoplichthyidae. The 5th edition of Fishes of the World classifies this family within the suborder Platycephaloidei in the order Scorpaeniformes. Other authorities differ and do not consider the Scorpaeniformes to be a valid order because the Perciformes is not monophyletic without the taxa within the Scorpaeniformes being included within it. These authorities consider the Platycephalidae to belong to the suborder Platycephaloidei, along with the families Bembridae, Parabembridae, Platycephalidae and Plectrogeniidae within the Perciformes. However, some workers have put forward evidence that there may be a rather surprising sister group relationship between this family and the gobies as they share more seemingly unique derived characters with each other than with other taxa, this needs to be further investigated,.