Species

As noted above, several presumed species are suspected to actively interbreed even today; these might warrant merging as a single species. This applies to the White-spotted (S. canaliculatus) and the Mottled Spinefoot (S. fuscescens), and to the Blotched Foxface (S. unimaculatus) and the Foxface Rabbitfish (S. vulpinus). Alternatively they might be very recently-evolved species that have not yet undergone complete lineage sorting, but their biogeography suggests that each group is just color morphs of a single species. On the other hand, the morphologyically diverse Blue-spotted Spinefoot (S. corallinus) might represent more than one species; orange individuals are found at the north of its range, while yellow ones occur to the south, and these two may be completely parapatric.