CalCOFI.io CalCOFI.io open data ecosystem

Lactoria fornasini

Thornback cowfish

Speciesaccepted · checked 2026-08-05WoRMS 219902ITIS 173255GBIF 2408112key worms:219902
i

2026-08-05: itis_id 173255 via WoRMS external link

The thornback cowfish, is a species of marine ray-finned fish belonging to the family Ostraciidae, the boxfishes. This species is found throughout the tropical Indo-Pacific from East Africa to the Bass Islands.W CalCOFI holds 2 observations of it in 1 dataset between 1998 and 1998, as larva.R

2
observations
2
records
2
sampling events
1998
years
1
datasets
larva
life stages
23 cm
max length
Lembeh, Indonesia - Thornback cowfish (Lactoria fornasini)
Photo · Rickard Zerpe · CC BY-SA 2.0 · commons

Observed in 1 dataset
i

One row per dataset, and beside it one cell per year, darker with more observations — the same strip the front door draws per dataset. Each row ends with the name that dataset uses (dataset_taxon); the accepted name is written once, in the title above. A quiet pill marks a name the authority does not accept.

  • 2 obs2 events1998larva
    name used: Lactoria fornasini Thornback cowfish · code 408

Ways inExplorerdb-queryERDDAPRPythonThis page as JSON

Code and endpoints ERDDAP · R · Python · JSON
ERDDAPCalCOFI's own server, the Ichthyoplankton table constrained to this taxon
https://erddap.calcofi.io/erddap/tabledap/swfsc_ichthyo.html?&taxon_key=%22worms:219902%22

Read from taxa.json of release v2026.10.20, written at release by calcofi4db::build_taxa_catalog(). The catalog's index is /species/.

How big is it 23 cm max
Thornback cowfish23 cm
bongo net ring71 cm

max · worms_attribute

Every mark is a measured length with its own source — hover one to read it. The reference objects are _data/size_reference.csv: two of them, the 505 µm bongo mesh and the net's ring, are CalCOFI's own sampling gear.

Life stages larva
  • Ichthyoplankton larva

The stages each dataset records for it, from the release's obs_bio.life_stage. Their lengths are under How big is it.

Lineage 13 ranks · Biota to Lactoria
Credits silhouette · photo · text · length
Elsewhere Wikidata · iNaturalist · FishBase

WikidataiNaturalistFishBase

The same organism on the services the faces were fetched from; the authorities' own pages are the ids in the head.

Cite the release, v2026.10.20

Cite the release, v2026.10.20; each dataset's own citation, licence and DOI are on its page. How to cite ↗