''Exyrias akihito'' is a species of marine
goby. Since the recent description of this species it has been found to have a wide distribution in the western
Pacific including the
Great Barrier Reef,
New Guinea,
Indonesia, the
Philippines and the
Yaeyama Islands,
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
. One individual was photographed in
Palau, and on January 13, 2005 one was caught in the
lagoon of
Majuro Atoll in the
Marshall Islands. This animal had only 9
soft ray
Fish anatomy is the study of the form or morphology of fish. It can be contrasted with fish physiology, which is the study of how the component parts of fish function together in the living fish. In practice, fish anatomy and fish physiolo ...
s in its
dorsal fin instead of the normal 10, a
congenital abnormality known to occasionally occur in gobies and other fish.
[Allen & Randall (2005), Randall (2008)]
Members of this species used to be assigned to the widespread species ''
Exyrias belissimus
''Exyrias'' is a genus of gobies mostly native to marine waters of the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific Ocean with one freshwater species ''(E. volcanus)'' known from the Philippines.
Species
There are currently five recognized species in th ...
'' but it differs from that species in a number of respects, notably in the very long
dorsal fin spines and the paler coloration with numerous yellow or orange spots on all parts. It also differs in
habitat preference: ''E. belissimus'' is a bottom-dwelling species of
turbid waters while ''E. akihito'' prefers clear water and is usually found on coral rubble or sandy patches near
coral reefs at a depth of 10–43 m.
The species was named in honour of Emperor
Akihito of Japan, who is a keen
ichthyologist
Ichthyology is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish, including bony fish ( Osteichthyes), cartilaginous fish (Chondrichthyes), and jawless fish (Agnatha). According to FishBase, 33,400 species of fish had been described as of Octobe ...
with a special interest in gobies.
Type
Type may refer to:
Science and technology Computing
* Typing, producing text via a keyboard, typewriter, etc.
* Data type, collection of values used for computations.
* File type
* TYPE (DOS command), a command to display contents of a file.
* Ty ...
material for the new species was in part procured by the
Imperial Household Agency
The (IHA) is an agency of the government of Japan in charge of state matters concerning the Imperial Family, and also the keeping of the Privy Seal and State Seal of Japan. From around the 8th century AD, up until the Second World War, it ...
's Biological Laboratory.
[Allen & Randall (2005)]
See also
*''
Akihito'', genus of the family Gobiidae named after Akihito
Footnotes
References
* (2005): ''Exyrias akihito'', a new species of coral-reef goby (Gobiidae) from the western pacific. ''Raffles Bulletin of Zoology'' 53(2): 231–235
PDF fulltext* (2008): Two new species and three new records of gobiid fishes from the Marshall Islands. ''Micronesica'' 40(1/2): 285–303
PDF fulltext
External links
*
Exyrias
Fish described in 2005
{{Gobiidae-stub