The Puffer Forum

The Pufferpedia has been updated with the full current list of freshwater puffers that are now recognised as Monotrete instead of Tetraodon.

When did they change name to Monotrete, and is there some scientific writings on this I can have a look at? I just want to update a Norwegian forum on this

Corvus listed these 2 references to me in a PM.
Fishes of Laos (2001)
The fishes of Danau Sentarum National Park (2005)

Thanks!

Copied/pasted from another discussion and PM:

Commonly used Monotretus and Monotreta are wrong spellings. Kottelat explained that Monotrete is a valid genus in:

Kottelat M. 2001. Nomenclatural status of names of tetraodontiform fishes based on Bibron’s unpublished work. Zoosyst 23: 605–618.

Several subsequent (and earlier) studies use this genus for most SE Asian puffers formerly known as the target group as well as the predatory puffers of this area. Some are:

Kottelat, M., 2000 Diagnosis of a new genus and 64 new species of fishes from Laos (Teleostei: Cyprinidae, Balitoridae, Bagridae, Syngnathidae, Chaudhuriidae and Tetraodontidae). J. South Asian Nat. Hist. 5(1):37-82.

This works describes M. turgidus for the first time in puffer history.

Kottelat, M., 2001 Fishes of Laos. WHT Publications Ltd., Colombo 5, Sri Lanka.

This work has:
M. abei
M. baileyi
M. cambodgiensis (M. cambodgiensis is considered the right name now, not barbatus.)
M. cochinchinensis
M. suvattii
M. turgidus

Kottelat, M. and E. Widjanarti, 2005 The fishes of Danau Sentarum National Park and the Kapuas Lakes area, Kalimantan Barat, Indonesia. Raffles Bull. Zool. Supplement (13):139-173.

This works has:

M. palembangensis

leiurus has not "officially" been transferred, but since all other puffers of the target group have been transferred, it is inevitably done as soon as the next scientific book/article with this species is published. You can add it to Monotrete, since it has all the necessary characters.

We're lucky to have you around to decipher all this for us, Corvus! I get so confused by taxonomic debates. I just went to a seminar the other day on Red Crossbills, and apparently the bird that's listed as a single species is actually 8 different species that look almost exactly the same. I give up!

Thanks a lot!

No problem. The work was done by Kottelat, I just happend to read it.