Acanthurus was first proposed as a
subgenus of
Chaetodon in 1775 by the
Swedish-speaking Finnish explorer,
orientalist and
naturalist Peter Forsskål, although he recognised that it was probably different from
Chaetodon even at the family level. In 1856
Desmarest designated
Teuthis hepatus, which had been
described from a
type now known to have been collected at Ambon Island in the Moluccas (other erroneous type localities were named) in 1758 by Linnaeus, as the
type species of the genus.
T. hepatus is a
synonym of
Paracanthurus hepatus and this would make
Paracanthurus synonymous with
Acanthurus. An alternative would be to use the name
Harpurus proposed as a
monospecific genus in 1788 by
Johann Reinhold Forster when he described
Harpurus fasciatus, a synonym of
Acanthurus triostegus. It has been proposed that the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature should be petitioned to stabilise the genera
Acanthurus and
Paracanthurus. In 2014 it was proposed that the type species of
Acanthurus should be
Chaetodon sohal, which had also been described by Forsskål in 1775 as a member of the subgenus alongside
C. bifasciatus,
C. nigrofuscus and
C. unicornis, and had been designated as the type species by
Jordan and
Evermann in 1917. It has been proposed that the genus
Ctenochaetus should be merged with
Acanthurus, as
Acanthurus is currently
paraphyletic. All
Ctenochaetus species are nested within
Acanthurus, while
A. nubilis and
A. pyroferus are furthermore nested within
Ctenochaetus.
Etymology The
genus name Acanthurus comes from
Ancient Greek ἄκανθα (
ákantha), meaning "spine", and
οὐρά (
ourá), meaning "tail", a reference to the scalpel-like bony plates on the
caudal peduncle, these also give rise to the vernacular English names surgeonfish and doctorfish. == Evolution ==