Review of Indo-Pacific coral reef fish systematics: 1980 to 2014

Ichthyological Research, Jul 2014

Coral reef fish taxonomy from 1980 to 2014 is reviewed, providing a subjective analysis of new species descriptions, including statistics on the rate of new discoveries, which families and genera have attracted the most taxonomic interest, the main geographic areas for new discoveries, which journals the new taxa were published in, the nationality of authors, the most productive authors, and the main focal areas for reef fish field work.

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Review of Indo-Pacific coral reef fish systematics: 1980 to 2014

Gerald R. Allen 0 Coral fish Systematics Review 0 0 G. R. Allen (&) Western Australian Museum , Locked Bag 49, Welshpool DC, Perth, Western Australia 6986, Australia Coral reef fish taxonomy from 1980 to 2014 is reviewed, providing a subjective analysis of new species descriptions, including statistics on the rate of new discoveries, which families and genera have attracted the most taxonomic interest, the main geographic areas for new discoveries, which journals the new taxa were published in, the nationality of authors, the most productive authors, and the main focal areas for reef fish field work. - Eschmeyer et al. (2010) presented an excellent summary of the history of marine fish biodiversity studies, with particular emphasis on statistics pertaining to the number of new taxa described (species, genera, and families), number of authors involved, leading museums for type specimen deposition, and leading geographic regions for new species discoveries. The current paper provides further analysis restricted to Indo-Pacific coral reef fishes, providing a general overview that covers the past 35 years, approximately correlated with the period since the first IndoPacific Fish Conference was held in 1981. Despite a trend of budget restraints associated with traditional museumbased collecting expeditions, this era was exceedingly productive with many exciting finds throughout this vast region. The present work includes a subjective analysis of new species descriptions, providing statistics on the rate of new discoveries, which families and genera have attracted the most taxonomic interest, the main geographic areas for the discoveries, where the new taxa were published, nationality of authors, the most productive authors, and the main focal areas for coral reef fish field work. Materials and methods The present analysis is restricted to coral reef fishes, which are herein defined as species that are entirely or mainly confined to coral reefs and intermingled substrata (sand/ rubble patches, seagrass beds, etc.), including deep reefs to about 100 m depth. Geographic coverage is limited to tropical and subtropical seas of the Indian and western Pacific Ocean with the eastern limit including the Hawaiian Islands and Easter Island. An Excel database was constructed by extracting an overall checklist of species described since 1980 from the authors fish-mapping program. Essentially, this continually updated program consists of distribution maps for every known species of reef fish in the tropical Indo-Pacific from East Africa and the Red Sea to the islands of Oceania. Distribution polygons, bounded by the outermost records of occurrence, were drawn on standard equal-area base maps, initially utilizing ArcView GIS software (Esri, New York), but now employing Quantum GIS (http://www.qgis. org/). In addition to distribution maps the program includes an accompanying database with family, genus, and species names, as well as the author(s) and year of publication. The primary type locality for each species was added to the database, utilizing the Catalog of Fishes website (Eschmeyer 2014). Information pertaining to field work locations was gleaned from the literature, online museum records, and direct contact with several institutions (see acknowledgements). Institutional acronyms follow Sabaj Perez (2010). New taxa: 1980present The total number of new coral reef fishes described from 1 January 1980 to 31 March 2014 is 1,434 species belonging to 317 genera and 69 families. The graph in Fig. 1 shows the uneven nature of yearly totals. The overall average for the 34-year period from 19802013 is 41.6 species per year. If we look at the average species per year for each decade there is a slight decrease during the 1990s (35.5) compared to the 1980s (38.1), but a strong increase in the new millennium with 47.5 in the 2000s and 51.3 from 2010 through the end of 2013. Gobiids, labrids, apogonids, and pomacentrids are the leading families for new species descriptions since 1980 (Table 1). Gobiidae, with an impressive total of 327 species, is the only family with more than 200 new taxa described. A significant second tier, boasting totals of 5573 species includes blenniids, bythitids, pseudochromids, tripterygiids, and serranids. The top 25 families, which includes those with 10 or more new taxa, accounts for 1,311 species or approximately 91 percent of the total species described during this period. A total of 69 families contained new species. Not surprisingly, two goby groups, Eviota and Trimma, are the leading genera with a combined total of 120 species described (Table 2). Other goby groups that feature in the list of leading genera with 10 or more species described include Priolepis (18), Vanderhorstia (18), Amblyeleotris (16), Bryaninops (13), and Pleurosicya (10). The apogonid genus Apogon (now split into Apogon, Apogonichthyoides, Jaydia, Nectamia, Ostorhinchus, Pristiapogon, Pristicon, Zapogon, and Zoramia) is se (...truncated)


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Gerald R. Allen. Review of Indo-Pacific coral reef fish systematics: 1980 to 2014, Ichthyological Research, 2014, pp. 2-8, Volume 62, Issue 1, DOI: 10.1007/s10228-014-0411-1