The fishes of the Family Scorpaenidae

Part 1: The sub-family Scorpaeninae

Abstract

Within the order Scleroparei, characterised by the well-developed suborbital stay, many systematists pack the typical family Scorpaenidae with an enormous assemblage of fishes, which while showing certain fundamental relationships are so divergent as to render such an arrangement out of keeping with the generally accepted range of a systematic family group. While this large group will eventually doubtless be divided into numerous families of a lesser range, there is adopted here the fairly well defined cleavage into two main groups, based chiefly on the nature of the dorsal fin. These with the closely related families Synanciidae and Caracanthidae form a natural sub-group in the order.