Pseudanthias emma new species, with notes on a collection of anthiadine serranid fishes from off Myanmar (eastern Indian Ocean)

Abstract

Recent exploratory trawling off the coast of Myanmar by the R/V Dr Fridtjof Nansen has resulted in the collection of six species of anthiadine serranid fishes. Four of the species are represented by specimen vouchers: Pseudanthias emma sp. nov., P. gibbosus (Klunzinger), Odontanthias rhodopeplus (Günther) and Plectranthias sp. 1. The remaining two species are represented only by photographs: Plectranthias sp. 2 and Sacura sanguinea Motomura, Yoshida & Vilasri. Pseudanthias emma is described from the 107 mm SL holotype. It is distinguished from congeners in having the following combination of characters: dorsal rays X,16; pectoral rays 18; lateral-line scales 42; third dorsal-fin spine longest, prolonged; no papillae on posterior margin of orbit; soft part of dorsal with low scaly sheath; subopercle and interopercle indistinctly serrated; caudal fin weakly concave centrally, with elongate filaments extending from second to uppermost and second to lowermost branched rays. Plectranthias sp. 1 is a probable new species closely allied to P. sagamiensis (Katayama), from which it appears to differ in having fewer segmented dorsal rays and fewer rows of cheek scales. Plectranthias sp. 2 is a probable new species closely allied to P. alcocki Bineesh, Akhilesh, Gopalakrishnan & Jena, from which it appears to differ in lacking a large black spot on the operculum and dusky ventral spot on the abdomen. New character, habitat and distribution information is provided for all six species. Pseudanthias vizagensis Krishna, Rao & Venu is suggested as a probable junior synonym of P. pillai Heemstra & Akhilesh.

Pseudanthias hangapiko, a new anthiadine serranid (Teleostei, Serranidae, Anthiadinae) from Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

“…Moving eastward out of the coral triangle and into the South Pacific, diversity within the genus decreases, and the relative proportion of endemic species increases, following the general pattern observed in other groups (Randall 1998;Allen and Erdmann 2012). Most Pseudanthias species occur on MCEs (Rocha et al 2018), where several new species have been recently described (Gill et al 2017;Gill and Psomadakis 2018;Victor et al 2020), a trend in discoveries that results from increased exploration of the deeper sections of coral reef habitats (Rocha et al 2018;Pinheiro et al 2019;Pimentel et al 2020).…”