Chelonodon

Chelonodon is a genus of pufferfishes native to the Indo-Pacific. They are mainly found in coastal regions and estuaries, but sometimes in rivers.

Chelonodon
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Actinopterygii
Order:	Tetraodontiformes
Family:	Tetraodontidae
Genus:	Chelonodon J. P. Müller, 1841
Type species
Tetrodon kappa Hamilton, 1822
Species
see text
Synonyms
Chelonodontops

Species and taxonomy

There are six recognized species in this genus:^[1][2]

• Chelonodon alvheimi (Psomadakis, Matsuura & Thein, 2018)
• Chelonodon kappa (Hamilton, 1822)
• Chelonodon laticeps (J. L. B. Smith, 1948) (Blue-spotted blaasop)
• Chelonodon leopardus (Day, 1878) (Banded leopard blowfish)
• Chelonodon patoca (F. Hamilton, 1822) (Milk-spotted puffer)
• Chelonodon pleurospilus (Regan, 1919) (Blaasop beauty)

Synonyms

• Chelonodon bengalensis (Habib et al., 2018) (Bengal reticulated puffer)^[3] is a synonym of Chelonodon patoca (Hamilton, 1822)^[4]

The type species of Chelonodon was Leiodon cutcutia, making it a synonym of Leiodon. As a consequence, Catalog of Fishes and other authorities instead placed the above species in Chelonodontops.^[3] FishBase, however, still uses Chelonodon,^[2] and therefore the type was changed to C. kappa in 2024.^[4]