quillfish

The quillfish (Ptilichthys goodei) is a species of marine ray-finned fish, it is the only species in the genus Ptilichthys and family Ptilichthyidae. This fish occurs in the northern North Pacific Ocean.

==Taxonomy== The quillfish was first formally described in 1881 by the American ichthyologist Tarleton Hoffman Bean with its type locality given as the entrance to Port Levasheff in Unalaska in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. Bean also proposed the monotypic genus Ptilichthys when he described this species. In 1883 David Starr Jordan and Charles Henry Gilbert classified Bean's genus in a monogeneric family, the Ptilichthyidae. The 5th edition of Fishes of the World classifies this family within the suborder Zoarcoidei, within the order Scorpaeniformes. Other authorities classify this family in the infraorder Zoarcales within the suborder Cottoidei of the Perciformes because removing the Scorpaeniformes from the Perciformes renders that taxon non monophyletic.