Hoplisoma is a genus of freshwater ray-finned fishes belonging to the subfamily Corydoradinae, the corys, of the family Callichthyidae, the armoured catfishes. The catfishes in this genus are found in South America.
Taxonomy Hoplisoma was first proposed as a genus in 1838 by the English naturalist William Swainson with Cataphractus punctatus, a species described in 1784 by Marcus Elieser Bloch from Suriname, as its only species and designated as its type species by Swainson. For a long period this taxon was regarded as a synonym of Corydoras but it was resurrected as a valid genus by a phylogenomic analysis published in 2025. This genus is classified in the subfamily Corydoradinae of the armoured catfish family Callichtyidae in the suborder Loricarioidei in the catfish order Siluriformes.
Etymology Hoplisoma combines holpon, meaning "shield" or "armour", with soma, which means "body", a reference to the bony scutes on the flanks of these fishes.
Species Hoplisoma contains the following valid species: In addition, the fossil species †Hoplisoma revelatum (Cockerell, 1925) is known from the Late Paleocene of Argentina, making it the oldest known confirmed loricarioid from the fossil record.
References