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The cheiline wrasses or flasherwrasses are saltwater fish of the subfamily Cheilininae, a subgroup of the wrasse family (Wrasse). They are distributed throughout the Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean, as well as the Red Sea.
Although the 4 genera in Cheilininae do form a monophyletic clade with each other, their relationship with each other is somewhat problematic as the genus Cheilinus appears to be Paraphyly.
The relationship of the genus Dwarf wrasse with Cheilininae is uncertain. Initially, based on morphological analyses by Westneat (1993), Cheilininae was considered to be composed of two subgroups, i.e., the "cheiline" wrasses and the "pseudocheiline" wrasses. At the time, the adjective "cheilinin" was used to describe fish in the subfamily Cheilininae. Doratonotus was considered to be the basalmost "cheiline" genus. However, Westneat & Alfaro (2005) showed that "pseudocheilines" and "cheilines" were not each other's closest relatives. As Doratonotus was not included in study, its placement relative to Cheilinini is uncertain. Later studies have recovered it in the Pseudolabrini, where it is now placed. The pseudocheiline wrasses eventually formed the subfamily Cirrhilabrinae, originally proposed as a tribe in 1999, but are still sometimes informally referred to as pseudocheilines despite this.
| + !Genus !Image | |
| Cheilinus | Broomtail wrasse |
| Epibulus | E. brevis |
| Oxycheilinus | O. digramma |
| Wetmorella | W. albofasciata |
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