Description

SINGLE PAPER

Volume 10, Issue 2 – July 2005

Richard Winterbottom: On the Status of Trimma tevegae and Trimma caudomaculata (Percomorpha: Gobiidae), pp. 51-56

Abstract

There has been no consensus in the recent literature as to whether the goby Trimma caudomaculata Yoshino and Araga, 1975 is a species distinct from Trimma tevegae Cohen and Davis, 1969. The purported differences between the two species, involving cheek and opercular scalation and colour pattern, were examined in representative type specimens of the two nominal species, as well as for subsamples from the extensive western Pacific portion of the range of T. tevegae. I conclude that these two nominal species represent the same taxon, and therefore that T. caudomaculata is a junior subjective synonym of T. tevegae.