see text The bandfishes, family Cepolidae, are 23 species of marine ray-finned fishes, They are native to the East Atlantic and Indo-Pacific wherethey dig burrows in sandy or muddy seabeds and eat zooplankton.

The bandfishes belong to the family Cepolidae, which is the only member of the superfamily Cepoloidea in the suborder Percoidei of the order Perciformes.

It is likely derived from cepollam or cepulam, which in 1686 was said by Francis Willughby to be local names among Roman fishermen for the similar "Fierasfer", a pearlfish, to which Linnaeus believed Cepola macrophthalma was related.

As well as this, in 1872 Giovanni Canestrini reported that in Naples the common name for C. macropthalma is Pesce cipolia meaning "onion fish".

[7] The bandfishes are found in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean, including the Mediterranean Sea and the Indo-West Pacific region, as far south as New Zealand.