Review of Indo-Pacific coral reef fish systematics: 1980 to 2014
Gerald R. Allen
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Coral fish Systematics Review
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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.
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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)