Most species are found in salt and brackish water in the Indo-Pacific and tropical East Atlantic, but S. salinarum is restricted to fresh water in Australia.

The largest species in the genus reaches a length of 50 cm (20 in).

[1] Paul Chabanaud retained the genus named Synaptura for this group and he designated Pleuronectes commersonnii as its type species.

Due to this some workers have assigned the species previously assigned to Synaptura, as raised by Chabanaud to Dagetichthys, a previously monotypic genus which contained just Dagetichthys lakdoensis.

Buglossidium luteum seems to be the most closely related taxon to Dagetichthys.