Pomacentrus bangladeshius, a new species of damselfish (Perciformes, Pomacentridae) from Saint Martin’s Island, Bangladesh

Abstract

A new species of damselfish, Pomacentrus bangladeshius, is described from 3 specimens, 67–77 mm standard length (SL), collected from Saint Martin’s Island, Bangladesh. The new species is distinguished from congeners in having the following combination of characters: XIV, 13 dorsal-fin elements; II, 14 anal-fin elements; 19 pectoral-fin rays; 18–19 lateral-line scales; 17–19 gill rakers on first arch; body depth 1.68–1.88 (1.88) in SL; snout 4.17–4.60 (4.17) in head length; head 2.91–3.09 (3.08) in SL; a prominent notch present between preorbital and suborbital; olive to dark brown body color, dark brown premaxilla, and yellow iris with a narrow bronze eye ring. The new species inhabits shallow reef flats around rock and coral outcrops. Phylogenetic analysis also shows the clear divergence of P. bangladeshius from other genetically closely related congeneric species retrieved from GenBank and that it represents a separate lineage.

Systematics of Damselfishes

“…Outside of the various family-wide phylogenies, there have been few studies focused on relationships within Pomacentrus (Liu et al, 2013;Sorenson et al, 2014;Allen et al, 2017bAllen et al, , 2017cFrable and Tea, 2019;Habib et al, 2020). Many of the relationships inferred in our phylogeny corroborated earlier hypotheses.…”

“…Cyt b has been cited as the most widely used locus in fish phylogenetics (Lydeard and Roe, 1997), and COI enjoyed rapid, widespread adoption since it was designated as the primary gene for the Barcode of Life Initiative (Hebert et al, 2003;Ward et al, 2005Ward et al, , 2009. Both loci have demonstrated their value for determining the relationships among damselfishes (e.g., Elliott et al, 1999;Santini and Polacco, 2006;Litsios et al, 2012aLitsios et al, , 2012bFrédérich et al, 2013;Liu et al, 2013;Randall and DiBattista, 2013;Sorenson et al, 2014;Allen et al, 2017bAllen et al, , 2017cAllen et al, , 2017dBernardi et al, 2017b;Motomura et al, 2017;Wibowo et al, 2018;Delrieu-Trottin et al, 2019;Frable and Tea, 2019;Habib et al, 2020;Nguyen et al, 2020).…”

“…AMSELFISHES (Teleostei: Pomacentridae) are a diverse and widespread family of primarily marine fishes found throughout the tropical oceans where they form a major component of reef communities (Hiatt and Strasburg, 1960;Randall, 1963;Brock et al, 1979;Allen and Werner, 2002;Bellwood and Wainwright, 2002). Currently, there are over 400 recognized damselfish species, classified in a single family, Pomacentridae, and divided among 29 genera (Fricke et al, 2020), with new species regularly being described (e.g., Allen and Erdmann, 2020;Habib et al, 2020;Shepherd et al, 2020). The oldest record of a pomacentrid is from the Paleocene (Cantalice et al, 2020), but members of the family are relatively uncommon in the fossil record (Bellwood, 1996;Bellwood and Sorbini, 1996;Bannikov and Bellwood, 2014;Cooper and Santini, 2016).…”

“…Although there have been a few phylogenetic analyses based on morphological characters since then (e.g., Tang, 2002;Aguilar-Medrano et al, 2011Aguilar-Medrano, 2013), with the rise of molecular techniques, most recent pomacentrid phylogenies have employed DNA sequence data. Species descriptions have often placed the newly described species in phylogenetic context (e.g., Allen et al, 2008Allen et al, , 2010aAllen et al, , 2010bAllen et al, , 2012aAllen et al, , 2012bAllen et al, , 2015aAllen et al, , 2015bAllen et al, , 2017aAllen et al, , 2017bAllen et al, , 2017cAllen et al, , 2017dAllen et al, , 2018aLiu et al, 2013;Randall and DiBattista, 2013;Bernardi et al, 2017b;Motomura et al, 2017;Wibowo et al, 2018;Frable and Tea, 2019;Tea et al, 2019;Habib et al, 2020). Some studies focused on individual genera (e.g., Lacson and Bassler, 1992;Godwin, 1995;Lessios et al, 1995;Bernardi and Crane, 1999;McCafferty et al, 2002;Bernardi, 2011;Sorenson et al, 2014;Vella et al, 2016;Bertrand et al, 2017;Campbell et al, 2018).…”

“…Species of Pomacentrus typically display XIII spines (Allen, 1991;Allen and Wright, 2003). There are 21 species that possess a modal count of XIV dorsal spines: P. aquilus, P. arabicus, P. armillatus, P. atriaxillaris, P. australis, P. baenschi, P. bangladeshius, P. bellipictus, P. fakfakensis, P. indicus, P. milleri, P. opisthostigma, P. pikei, P. polyspinus, P. proteus, P. reidi, P. rodriguesensis, P. stigma, P. sulfureus, P. trichrourus, and P. vatosoa (Allen, 1991(Allen, , 1993(Allen, , 2002Allen and Wright, 2003;Allen and Erdmann, 2009b;Allen et al, 2018b;Frable and Tea, 2019;Habib et al, 2020). Allen and Wright (2003) observed that species with XIV dorsal spines are concentrated in the Indian Ocean, particularly in the western Indian Ocean, where almost half of them are found (P. aquilus, P. arabicus, P. atriaxillaris, P. baenschi, P. indicus, P. pikei, P. rodriguesensis, P. sulfureus, P. trichrourus, and P. vatosoa; Allen, 1991Allen, , 1993Allen, , 2002Allen and Wright, 2003;Frable and Tea, 2019).…”