ABSTRACT
The perciform suborder Blennioidei comprises approximately 883 species of mostly tropical and warm temperate marine fishes. As a group, they are worldwide in distribution except for the deep sea, occurring in most shallow water marine systems and occasionally entering freshwater areas. There is a growing appreciation of the importance of small fishes such as blennioids in the ecology of tropical coastal systems (Munday and Jones, 1998; Depczynski and Bellwood, 2003), where they are often among the
most numerous species present (e.g., Thomson and Gilligan, 1983; SmithVaniz et al., 2006). As blennioids are typically small, benthic fishes that with care can be readily observed and studied, they have become significant models for the study of evolution and ecology.
