Symphysanodon Bleeker

William D. Anderson, Jr. & Victor G. Springer, 2005, Review of the perciform fish genus Symphysanodon Bleeker (Symphysanodontidae), with descriptions of three new species, S. mona, S. parini, and S. rhax., Zootaxa 996, pp. 1-44 : 2

[[ Genus Symphysanodon Bleeker ]]

The small to medium-sized perciform fishes of the genus Symphysanodon Bleeker inhabit waters over the continental shelf, upper continental slope, and submarine ridges and occur in similar depths in insular areas. The genus is known from 10 species -six previously described ( S. andersoni Kotthaus , S. berryi Anderson , S. katayamai Anderson , S. maunaloae Anderson , S. octoactinus Anderson , and S. typus Bleeker ), the three described herein, and a species known only from stomach contents of a specimen of Latimeria chalumnae Smith collected off the Comoros in the western Indian Ocean. Symphysanodon has been treated variously as a member of the Acropomatidae , Serranidae , or Lutjanidae , but it lacks traits that would support assigning it to any of those families. Fourmanoir (1981), without explanation, erected the monotypic family Symphysanodontidae , an action that seems justified because Symphysanodon does not appear to possess characters that would allow its placement elsewhere. During an extensive study of the branchial morphology of bony fishes, the second author examined a specimen of Symphysanodon , collected in Mona Passage off the west coast of Puerto Rico, that differs from all other species of Symphysanodon in number of gillrakers on the first arch. It also differs from the other two Atlantic species and at least five of the other species of the genus in two other aspects of gill-arch structure. (Springer and Johnson, 2004, described and illustrated the dorsal gill-arch musculature of S. berryi .) The first author received from N. V. Parin material of the second new species, collected over the Sala y Gómez Ridge in the eastern South Pacific, and from the Natural History Museum in London specimens of the third new one, caught off the Maldive Islands in the northern Indian Ocean. The second new species is apparently most closely related to S. maunaloae from which it can be distinguished by mean numbers of pectoral-fin rays and tubed lateral-line scales and by several morphometric characters; the third new species is very similar to S. berryi but displays a number of morphometric differences.