Bumphead Parrotfish: Bolbometopon muricatum

Bolbometopon muricatum (Valenciennes 1839), the largest of the scarine labrids (Choat et al. 2006), is an excavating parrotfish (Scaridae). The genus is monotypic comprises a distinct lineage within the group and is notable for its massive jaws and associated musculature (Bellwood 1994). The evolutionary history of the scarine labrids identifies them as a geographically widespread but relatively recent group, confined mainly to coral reefs. The lineage containing Bolbometopon diverged approximately 13 my bp (Alfaro et al. 2009). Although the parrotfishes have a number of distinctive morphological and nutritional traits recent phylogenetic analyses place them within the broader grouping of the Family Labridae (Westneat and Alfaro 2004). We now know that large wrasses such as Cheilinus undulatus (Chap. 12.13) are more closely related to large parrotfishes such as Bolbometopon than they are to any of the smaller wrasses that inhabit coral reefs. B. muricatum is widespread on Indo-Pacific coral reefs with a distribution covering 37.6 × 10 6 km 2 and extending from the Red Sea through the Indian Ocean and Indo- Australian archipelago to the central and southern Pacific excluding the Hawaiian Islands and the Marquesas. There is also some doubt as to whether this species occurs in the Society Islands (Rob Myers, personal communication in 2009)