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Wrasse (order Perciformes: family Labridae) comprise the second largest family of marine fish, with 509 species and 68 genera, the majority of which inhabits coastal waters (Nelson, 2006; Eschmeyer & Fong, 2012). The taxonomic history is complicated for many labrids, as juveniles, males and females can have different colour patterns and morphology, and some early descriptions were limited. The razor fish, genus Iniistius Gill 1862 was considered a synonym of Xyrichtys Cuvier 1814, but the former was resurrected to generic level by Randall & Earle (2002). This genus contains 19 valid species (Eschmeyer & Fong, 2012), and the characteristics of the genus are that the origin of the dorsal fin is over or less than half an orbit diameter behind the eye and that the first two dorsal spines are flexible (Randall & Earle, 2002). Nine species are known to occur in the Indian Ocean for at least part of their range: I. aneitensis, I. bimaculatus, I. cyanifrons, I. dea, I. griffithsi, I. jacksonensis, I. melanopus, I. pavo and I. pentadactylus (Eschmeyer & Fong, 2012) (in which five of these species: I. bimaculatus, I. cyanifrons, I. dea, I. pentadactylus and I. pavo are known from Indian waters (Froese & Pauly, 2012)).
The razor fish originally described as Novacula twistii (Bleeker, 1856), based on material from Molucca Islands, Indonesia is distributed in the western Pacific from Japan to Indonesia (including Malaysia, Philippines and Taiwan). On 20 December 2008 a single specimen of Iniistius twistii was collected by the authors from Cochin fisheries harbour, Kochi (Kerala), India (Figure 1). Subsequently in February 2012 an additional specimen was collected (CMFRI. GB. 31. 78. 30....