Description

SINGLE PAPAER

Volume 10, Issue 2 – July 2005

Richard Winterbottom: Feia dabra, a new species of gobiid fish (Percomorpha: Gobiidae) from Palau, pp. 45-50

Abstract

A new species of the Indo-Pacific gobiid Feia, F. dabra, is described from seven collections and 13 specimens collected in 2004 in the Republic of Palau. The new species is most similar to F. ranta from Vietnam, the two species differing from the other two species in the genus in the possession of scales in the predorsal midline and on the pectoral and pelvic fin bases, a diagonal bar across the cheek from the posteroventral corner of the eye, and an eye diameter wide black bar on the body beginning at the first dorsal fin origin. Feia dabra differs from F. ranta in lacking a large, heart-shaped blotch on the opercle, having instead a small dark spot or streak on the anteroventral tip of the opercle, in lacking the “{“-shaped dark bar on the upper base of the pectoral fin (but having a dark blotch in the middle third of the length of the upper pectoral fin rays), in the presence of three (rather than two) papillae in cheek row c, and a straight row r of three papillae on the snout in line with the anteromedial border of the eye (vs. the anterior two papillae in a line, the posteriormost offset laterally), and in having the vertical portion of the anterior preopercular ridge of papillae, row e, well forward of the vertical limb of the preopercle on the cheek (vs. just anterior to the vertical preopercle limb). Feia dabra is currently known only from the Palau Islands.