A new species of Chromis damselfish from the tropical western Atlantic (Teleostei, Pomacentridae)

Abstract

Initially described in 1882, Chromis enchrysurus, the Yellowtail Reeffish, was redescribed in 1982 to account for an observed color morph that possesses a white tail instead of a yellow one, but morphological and geographic boundaries between the two color morphs were not well understood. Taking advantage of newly collected material from submersible studies of deep reefs and photographs from rebreather dives, this study sought to determine whether the white-tailed Chromis is actually a color morph of Chromis enchrysurus or a distinct species. Phylogenetic analyses of mitochondrial genes cytochrome b and cytochrome c oxidase subunit I separated Chromis enchrysurus and the white-tailed Chromis into two reciprocally monophyletic clades. A principal component analysis based on 27 morphological characters separated the two groups into clusters that correspond with caudal-fin coloration, which was either known or presumed based on the specimen’s collection site according to biogeographic data on species boundaries in the Greater Caribbean. Genetic, morphological, and biogeographic data all indicate that the white-tailed Chromis is a distinct species, herein described as Chromis vanbebberaesp. nov. The discovery of a new species within a conspicuous group such as damselfishes in a well-studied region of the world highlights the importance of deep-reef exploration in documenting undiscovered biodiversity.

Description of the First Species of Polylepion (Teleostei: Labridae) from the Atlantic Ocean with Analysis of Evolutionary Relationships of the New Species

“…The new species joins a growing list of new Caribbean deep-reef fish species discovered at mesophotic and rariphotic depths and collected with the aid of robotic arms and fish anesthetics using human-occupied submersibles (Robertson et al, 2022). Including the new species of Polylepion , exploration of the Caribbean deep-reef fish fauna by the Smithsonian's Deep Reef Observation Project (DROP) has resulted in the description of one new genus and more than 25 new species, with additional new species yet to be described (e.g., Tornabene and Baldwin, 2019, and references therein; McFarland et al, 2020; Tornabene et al, 2023). While some of the new species inhabit mesophotic depths, P. gilmorei and several new species in the genera Birdsongichthys , Haptoclinus , Liopropoma , Lipogramma , Robinsichthys , and Varicus live in the rariphotic, below the mesophotic but above the deep aphotic zone (Baldwin et al, 2018; Tornabene et al, 2023).…”

Corrigenda: A new species of Chromis damselfish from the tropical western Atlantic (Teleostei, Pomacentridae). ZooKeys 1008: 107–138. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1008.58805

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Following the publication of our paper (McFarland et al 2020), it was brought to our attention by Andrew Bentley (University of Kansas) that Table 3 listed the holotype of the species Chromis enchrysurus Jordan & Gilbert, 1882 as KU 27029, and mislabeled the species as Chromis enchrysura. We regret this mistake, as there are three syntypes of C. enchryurus, none of which is the specimen listed.

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