Updated 22 May 2025
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Amblyopsis DeKay 1842 amblýs (Gr. ἀμβλύς), dull, blunt or not sharp; ópsis (Gr. ὄψις), sight, presumably referring to rudimentary, non-functional eyes of A. spelaea, concealed under the skin

Amblyopsis hoosieri Niemiller, Prejean & Chakrabarty 2014 in honor of Indiana, USA, the Hoosier State, referring to a) where it is endemic; b) Indiana University, where Carl H. Eigenmann was a Professor of Zoology and studied blind cave vertebrates, including populations of this species in Lawrence County just to the south of Bloomington, and home to David Starr Jordan, the “Father of American Ichthyology,” for most of his career; and c) the fact that Niemiller is a “fervent fan of Indiana Hoosier basketball” (while Chakrabarty, the authors note, who attended the University of Michigan, is not)

Amblyopsis spelaea DeKay 1842 Latin for of a cave, referring to its limestone cave habitat

Chologaster Agassiz 1853 chólos (Gr. χωλός), deprived of a foot (homologous to the ventral fins); gastḗr (Gr. γαστήρ), belly or stomach, referring to its lack of ventral fins

Chologaster cornuta Agassiz 1853 Latin for horned, referring to its tubular, horn-like nostrils [originally spelled cornutus, emended to agree with feminine genus]

Forbesichthys Jordan 1929 in honor of life-long friend and co-worker Stephen Alfred Forbes (1844–1930), University of Illinois (USA), who discovered and described F. papilliferus; ichthýs (Gr. ἰχθύς), fish [replacement name for Forbesella Jordan & Evermann 1927, preoccupied in tunicates]

Forbesichthys agassizii (Putnam 1872) in honor of Swiss-born American zoologist-geologist Louis Agassiz (1807–1873), “not only in kindly remembrance of the eight years I was associated with him as student and assistant, but also because the fish so well illustrates the decided position he has taken relative to the immutability of species” (in an era in which Darwinian evolution was a novel and hotly debated idea, Agassiz, a staunch anti-Darwinian, believed that each species was fixed and unchangeable because it represented an idea in the mind of God; in his description, Putnam hypothesized that blind cavefishes did not evolve from sighted forms but had always been blind)

Forbesichthys papilliferus (Forbes 1882) papilla (L.), bud; ferus (L.), bearing or carrying, referring to “peculiar tubercles” or sensory papillae occurring in short rows all over head

Speoplatyrhinus Cooper & Kuehne 1974 spéos (Gr. σπέος), cave, referring to subterranean habitat; platýs (Gr. πλατύς), flat, and rhinós (Gr. ῥινός), genitive of rhís (ῥίς), nose, referring to its greatly flattened snout

Speoplatyrhinus poulsoni Cooper & Kuehne 1974 in honor of biologist and speleologist Thomas L. Poulson (b. 1934), University of Illinois Chicago (USA), for his “outstanding work with the amblyopsid fishes and for his continuing interest in these animals, their ecology and their evolution” (he also helped and advised the authors, who included some of his work)

Troglichthys Eigenmann 1899 trṓglē (Gr. τρώγλη), hole, referring to cave habitat; ichthýs (Gr. ἰχθύς), fish

Troglichthys rosae (Eigenmann 1898) in honor of Eigenmann’s wife Rosa Smith Eigenmann (1858–1947), herself an ichthyologist, for the rediscovery of a blind goby in California (Typhlogobius californiensis), and a “pioneer in the study of Biology among women”

Typhlichthys Girard 1859 typhlós (Gr. τυφλός), blind, described as “perfectly eyeless”; ichthýs (Gr. ἰχθύς), fish

Typhlichthys eigenmanni Charlton 1933 in honor of German-born American ichthyologist Carl H. Eigenmann (1863–1927), who studied the loss of visual structures in cave vertebrates (based on a manuscript name by Carl L. Hubbs, inadvertently made available by Charlton in a publication on the central nervous system of blind cavefishes; neuroanatomical characters described by Charlton are sufficient to differentiate this species from Amblyopsis rosae)

Typhlichthys subterraneus Girard 1859 Latin for underground, referring to its cave habitat