''Nemateleotris exquisita'' is a species of

dartfish Dartfishes are a group of fish, formerly considered to be a subfamily, Ptereleotrinae, of goby-like fishes in the family Microdesmidae of the order Gobiiformes, Authorities now consider the species in the family Microdesmidae are within the Gobi ...

which was described in 2013 from specimens collected in the

Red Sea The Red Sea ( ar, البحر الأحمر - بحر القلزم, translit=Modern: al-Baḥr al-ʾAḥmar, Medieval: Baḥr al-Qulzum; or ; Coptic: ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϩⲁϩ ''Phiom Enhah'' or ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϣⲁⲣⲓ ''Phiom ǹšari''; T ...

, off Mauritius and

Kwa-Zulu Natal KwaZulu-Natal (, also referred to as KZN and known as "the garden province") is a province of South Africa that was created in 1994 when the Zulu bantustan of KwaZulu ("Place of the Zulu" in Zulu) and Natal Province were merged. It is locate ...

, South Africa. Formerly, the

elegant firefish ''Nemateleotris decora'', the elegant firefish or purple firefish, is a species of dartfish native to tropical waters in the Indo-West Pacific, from Mauritius to Samoa, north to Ryukyu Islands, and south to New Caledonia, from depths ranging betw ...

(''Nemateleotris decora'') was thought to be found in the western Indian Ocean but ''N. exquisita'' was found to be larger, with a more slender body and longer snout, as well as the having a shorter first spine on the first

dorsal fin A dorsal fin is a fin located on the back of most marine and freshwater vertebrates within various taxa of the animal kingdom. Many species of animals possessing dorsal fins are not particularly closely related to each other, though through conv ...

. They also differ in colour with this species being yellow in the anterior part of the body and this colour extends further towards the tail than the analogous coloured area on ''N. decora''. A hybrid ''N. decora'' x ''esquisita'' is thought to have been photographed in the Maldives in 1988, while the

IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natu ...

states that further taxonomic research is required to ascertain the validity of ''N. exquisita''.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q21309539 exquisita Fish described in 2013 Taxa named by John Ernest Randall