''Pelangia mbutaensis'' is a species of

rainbowfish The rainbowfish or Melanotaeniidae is a family of small, colourful freshwater fish found in northern and eastern Australia, New Guinea (including islands in Cenderawasih Bay and Raja Ampat Islands in Indonesia), Sulawesi and Madagascar. The lar ...

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

to West Papua in

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

. This species was described by Gerald R. Allen in 1988 from

types 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. * Typ ...

collected from the Lake Mbuta Basin which lies about 8 kilometers northwest of

Etna Bay Etna Bay ( id, Teluk Etna, nl, Etna-baai) is a bay in eastern Kaimana Regency, situated in the southeastern corner of West Papua province, Indonesia. Teluk Etnaat GeoNames.Org (cc-by) post updated 2012-01-17; database downloaded on 2015-11-27 T ...

in West Papua. It is the only known member of its

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

, the name ''Pelangia'' is derived from the

Indonesian Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to: * Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia ** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago ** Indonesian ...

word for "rainbow" and the

specific name Specific name may refer to: * in Database management systems, a system-assigned name that is unique within a particular database In taxonomy, either of these two meanings, each with its own set of rules: * Specific name (botany), the two-part (bino ...

refers to the type locality, the swampy basin of Lake Mbuta.

References

Melanotaeniinae Monotypic fish genera Freshwater fish of Western New Guinea Fish described in 1998 {{Atheriniformes-stub