Tempestichthys bettyae, a new genus and species of ocean sleeper (Gobiiformes, Thalasseleotrididae) from the central Coral Sea

Tempestichthys bettyae, a new genus and species of ocean sleeper (Gobiiformes, Thalasseleotrididae) from the central Coral Sea

The Thalasseleotrididae is a small family of exclusively marine gobioids. They form a sister taxon to the Gobiidae and Oxudercidae and are distinguished from most species in these families by having six branchiostegal rays and a membrane linking the hyoid arch to the first ceratobranchial. Here we use micro-CT informed morphological data and molecular phylogenetics to describe a new genus and species of thalasseleotridid discovered on a tropical oceanic coral reef in the central Coral Sea. Tempestichthys bettyae gen. et sp. nov. is the first tropical thalasseleotridid and differs from other members of the Thalasseleotrididae by having a T-shaped palatine and a distinctive shape and colouration. The three previously described thalasseleotridid species are endemic to temperate coastal waters of southern Australia and New Zealand and are all translucent brown with dorsoventrally compressed heads. However, Tempestichthys bettyae is laterally compressed with a pointed snout and is translucent white with opaque white and crimson red markings and a largely crimson iris. We discuss the unique characters of this new genus, including its distribution, form, colouration and diminutive size, and highlight the potential of there being undescribed diversity in the Thalasseleotrididae.

Australia, Gobiidae, Gobioidei, coral reef, cryptic, cryptobenthic fishes, morphology, osteology, phylogeny, tropical

10.1080/14772000.2022.2090633

1477-2000

Goatley, Christopher H. R.

b158dc1a-76f3-4ace-9d33-260d8c76ac93

Tornabene, Luke

9af512c2-5327-4b18-9ca6-ad3c8be8474b

2022

Goatley, Christopher H. R.

b158dc1a-76f3-4ace-9d33-260d8c76ac93

Tornabene, Luke

9af512c2-5327-4b18-9ca6-ad3c8be8474b

Goatley, Christopher H. R. and Tornabene, Luke (2022) Tempestichthys bettyae, a new genus and species of ocean sleeper (Gobiiformes, Thalasseleotrididae) from the central Coral Sea. Systematics and Biodiversity, 20 (1), [2090633]. (doi:10.1080/14772000.2022.2090633).

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Accepted/In Press date: 13 June 2022

e-pub ahead of print date: 25 July 2022

Published date: 2022

Additional Information: Funding Information: The fieldwork for this project was jointly funded by the Director of National Parks, Australia and ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, JCU (CE140100020). Micro-CT scanning at the Karel F. Liem Bioimaging Center was supported by the NSF (oVert, Award Number 1701665, LT). Collaborative research was funded by a Fulbright Postdoctoral Future Fellowship funded by the Kinghorn Foundation and a University of New England Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (CHRG). This research was conducted in the Coral Sea Marine Park under Permit No. AU-COM2018-403. The authors wish to thank the relevant staff at Parks Australia and Andrew Hoey, Morgan Pratchett, Andrew Baird, Hugo Harrison, Tane Sinclair-Taylor, Rob and Anita Benn, and the crew of the Iron Joy for field assistance; Yi-Kai Tea, Tony Gill, Adam Summers, Stephen Wroe, Richard Flavel, Kendall Clements, and Alison Ballance for taxonomic and imaging assistance; Amanda Hay, Joseph DiBattista, Kerryn Parkinson, Sally Reader, and Katherine Maslenikov for assistance with museum specimens. Funding Information: Data were analysed using Bayesian phylogenetic inference in the program MrBayes 3.2 (Ronquist et al., ) using the BEAGLE library (Ayres et al., ). The partitioning scheme and substitution model choice followed Agorreta et al. (). The analysis consisted of two parallel Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) runs, each with four chains, run for 40 × 10 generations, sampled every 1000 generations. Analyses were conducted through the NIH and NSF funded CIPRES Science Gateway (Miller et al., ). To determine model convergence, mixing, and appropriate burn-in values, we assessed MCMC logs using Tracer 1.7 (Rambaut et al., ). 6 Publisher Copyright: © The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London 2022. All Rights Reserved.

Keywords: Australia, Gobiidae, Gobioidei, coral reef, cryptic, cryptobenthic fishes, morphology, osteology, phylogeny, tropical