Jump to content

OldTownJoe

Newbie 1
  • Posts

    26
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Profile Information

  • Country
    United States
  • Location
    Chicago

OldTownJoe's Achievements

Newbie

Newbie (1/14)

3

Reputation

  1. The part about this fish being from Indonesia is almost certainly incorrect. The genus is restricted to the Atlantic/East Pacific. Quality Marine has an identical specimen on their website listed as being collected from the "East America's" (=East Pacific). There are three species described form that region, none of which match this one. So this is likely Rypticus sp. nov.
  2. I particularly like how they made up a binomial name for it... though they didn't form the epithet correctly. "Dilani" is apparently a common female name in Sri Lanka. If we must make up phony taxonomies, let's at least do it correctly. Centropyge delaniae!
  3. This fish comes courtesy of Deep Sea Challengers. It's in their recent https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpM9bX5CJCQ. Any idea what species this is?
  4. I would say these are not ephippiata, Though it would be interesting to know exactly where these specimens came from. Could these be a hybrid of ephippiata/paccagnellae? Or are these even legitimate species? This whole group of dottybacks could use some extensive genetic testing. Here's a photo of ephippiata by Dr Randall, taken from Allen & Erdmann 2012. The yellow saddle is much reduced and more sharply defined. "Ephippium" is Greek for "saddle cloth".
  5. Toshiyuki Suzuki, the lead author of the species description of P. winterbottomi, has posted this photo that he has identified as P. winterbottomi. Given the similar collection locality and coloration, this is almost certainly your fish.
  6. This seems to be a juvenile. The yellow gets less intense with age.
  7. The first one looks to be P. multifasciata. The second photo, from what I can make out in a dorsal view, looks like P. schauinslandi. This species seems to display an unusual amount of color variation... but without better photos I can't even be sure that those two specimens are the same species.
  8. Oops, I spoke too soon. Parapercis are extraordinarily difficult to ID, with there being dozens of species with very similar color patterns. A clearer photo of this specimen would make identification easier. This is P. randalli. Which looks a lot like P. katoi, but it has red dots in the dorsal fin and is lacking the dark spots on the lateral bars. A better match for our specimen, I think. There's also the recently described P. rubromaculata, which differs from P. randalli mostly in the coloration of the caudal fin. In randalli there are dark blotches, whereas rubromaculata has red spots. Looking at the photo of our specimen it seems there's a dark blotch in the middle of the caudal fin that would correspond to the dark blotches in P. randalli. http://rmbr.nus.edu.sg/rbz/biblio/60/60rbz163-172.pdf http://fishdb.sinica.edu.tw/pdf/809.pdf?PHPSESSID=d6d3bj7fattmm0170ji5c9huk4
  9. Here's the holotype of P. katoi. There are some slight differences in the coloration of the dorsal fin and the red bars along it's side don't have the dark spots in them.. but it's pretty close. http://www.kahaku.go.jp/research/publication/zoology/s2/08Randall_et_al.pdf "Parapercis katoi seems to be more closely related to a new species from Taiwan and southern Japan (Randall, in press) collected from depths of 80 to perhaps 400 m. It has essentially the same dentition and pattern of scales, a smooth preopercular margin, and is closer in coloration (Masuda et al., 1984: pl. 261, fig. B, as P. somaliensis). It differs from P. katoi in having 52–53 lateral-line scales, usually 17 pectoral rays, lacking a prolonged upper lobe to the caudal fin (total caudal-fin length 19.0–22.8% SL, compared to 24.4–28.8% for P. katoi), and having a shorter snout (9.6–10.3% SL, compared to 11.0–12.5% for P. katoi)." And the lanceolatus is ridiculous.
  10. Here are a couple of large, colorful jawfish that LiveAquaria and Old Town Aquarium both have received this week. I'm posting these to try and resolve the uncertainty regarding the correct species identification. I'm still waiting to hear back from our supplier regarding the collection locality on these specimens, as that should unequivocally clear this up. O. lonchurus is Atlantic, O. fenmutis is "an eastern Pacific endemic, distributed on the central portion of the Cocos plate." To the best of my knowledge there isn't much (if any) aquarium collecting done in the known range of O. fenmutis, whereas the large Atlantic range of O. lonchurus is a far more likely point of origin, with the species known from the heavily collected Florida waters. Aside from the locality, there are morphological differences in this specimen and O. fenmutis. The most obvious difference is the truncate caudal fin of O. fenmutis versus the rounded caudal fin seen in these specimens. In fact, the name lonchurus is from the Greek for "lance-shaped tail". Also note the obvious differences in coloration. The O. fenmutis specimen is the preserved holotype, which the authors describe as: "Preserved the male is very dark, especially in the head and back, very dark dorsal fin, three bluish lines on the sides that reach the tail and at least twice in the head. Females generally clearer than the male, with blue lines on the sides." The overall darker coloration (fish will usually lighten in preservation) and more vivid blue lines indicate this these new specimens are not O. fenmutis. I'm hesitant to disagree with a marine biologist when it comes to marine biology, but I'm pretty confident in this identification. Lemon, did Adeljean say why he thought this wasn't O. lonchurus? What's interesting about O. lonchurus is how little is written about it in the scientific literature. The holotype was described in 1882 from a specimen removed from the stomach of a snapper. Other specimens were subsequently collected with trawls in deep (80m+) water. Apparently our supplier has found a more accessible population somewhere.
×
×
  • Create New...