Acanthurus

Acanthurus is a genus of marine ray-finned fish belonging to the family Acanthuridae, which includes the surgeonfishes, unicornfishes and tangs, found in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Ocean. They are found in tropical oceans, especially near coral reefs, with most species in the Indo-Pacific but a few are found in the Atlantic Ocean. As other members of the family, they have a pair of spines, one on either side of the base of the tail which are dangerously sharp.

==Taxonomy== 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.