Johnius taiwanensis, a new species of Sciaenidae from the Taiwan Strait, with a key to Johnius species from Chinese waters

Abstract

A new sciaenid fish, Johnius taiwanensis, is described from the southeast coast of mainland China from Zhejiang to Guangdong, Hong Kong, and west coast of Taiwan. Johnius taiwanensis sp. nov. can be distinguished from other Johnius species by having a grayish dorsal half of body divided by a clear line from a whitish ventral half, and a black spot at the dorsal half of pectoral-fin axil, appearing as a distinct dot at the most dorsal point of the pectoral-fin base. First dorsal fin black tipped, other fins pale to dusky but never darkly pigmented. The species lacks distinctly enlarged teeth on upper and lower jaws. Body scales ctenoid, moderately large, with five or six rows between first dorsal-fin origin and lateral line. It is one of the most abundant sciaenids found in the shallow coastal waters (<20 m) of southeast mainland China and the west coast of Taiwan. It has often been misidentified as J. macrorhynus in the region. Phylogenetic analysis from all 27 sciaenid species found in Chinese waters based on the complete COI and 16S rRNA gene sequences confirmed that the genus Johnius is monophyletic and J. taiwanensis is placed as a sister species of J. trewavasae. Acoustic analysis has shown that J. taiwanensis produces a unique sound among fishes in Taiwan coastal waters.

Length‐weight relationships of 11 fish species from the Min River Estuary and its adjacent waters, Fujian Province, China

“…For J. trewavasae , the SL max is 15.0 cm in FISHBASE, while this study provided the new maximum lengths on 22.0 cm TL max and 18.5 cm SL max . For J. taiwanensis , a newly described species in the family Sciaenidae (Chao et al., 2019), the new maximum total length is 20.9 cm. This study provides basic biological data of fishery species in the Min River Estuary and its adjacent waters which can be used for further fishery and biology studies.…”

“…Species identification were confirmed against the FISHBASE (Froese & Pauly, 2020), the World Register of Marine Species (WORMS, 2020) and Chao et al. (2019). For the 11 fish species, the total length (TL) was measured to the nearest 0.1 cm, and the body weight (W) to the nearest 0.01 g for each individual.…”

Reidentification of Decapterus macarellus and D. macrosoma (Carangidae) reveals inconsistencies with current morphological taxonomy in China

“…The mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase (COI) gene fragment varies little within species but significantly between species; this fragment can be amplified via polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using universal primers and standardized experimental procedures and is thus employed for DNA barcoding, which has been widely accepted and utilized (Hebert et al 2003) for identifying species (Li et al 2019a;Xu et al 2019), discovering new species and new records (Li et al 2018;Chao et al 2019;Wu et al 2020), identifying cryptic species (Cheng and Sha 2017;Delrieu-Trottin et al 2018), identifying ichthyoplankton species (Hubert et al 2015, Li et al 2017, and detecting invasive species (Hernández-Triana et al 2019), among other purposes. Therefore, in this study, we employed DNA barcoding to genetically compare D. macarellus and D. macrosoma and then aligned the sequences with homologous sequences retrieved from GenBank for further analysis.…”

Complete mitochondrial genome and the phylogenetic position of a new species, Johnius taiwanensis (Perciformes: Sciaenidae) from Chinese waters

“…The body shape and pigmentation are also similar in many Johnius species, which has made the identification quite confused in literature. The newly described species, Johnius taiwanensis is commonly found along both sides of the Taiwan Strait, from Zhejiang to Guangdong and Hong Kong on the west side, and from west coast of Taiwan on the east side (Chao et al 2019). In this study, we presented the complete mitochondrial genome of J. taiwanensis and analyzed its phylogenetic relationship based on another 26 available mitogenomes in Sciaenidae using two in the family Polynemidae as an outgroup.…”

“… Abstract In this study, the complete mitogenome of a new species, Johnius taiwanensis (Chao et al. 2019 ) was obtained. Its mitogenome is 18,451 bp in length, consisting of 37 genes with the typical gene order and direction of transcription in vertebrates.…”