Description

SINGLE PAPER

Volume 6, Issue 4 – March 2003

Jeffrey T. Williams and Julie H. Mounts: Descriptions of six new Caribbean fish species in the genus Starksia (Labrisomidae), pp. 145-164

Abstract

Extensive collecting efforts using rotenone sampling throughout the Caribbean over the past four decades have vastly increased the numbers of specimens of cryptic fishes in museum collections. Among these specimens, we discovered representatives of six new cryptic fish species belonging in the Starksia fasciata and S. sluiteri species complexes. Descriptions are provided herein for the following new species: S. leucovitta from Navassa Island; S. melasma from Mona Island, Puerto Rico, and Buck Island Reef National Monument, St. Croix; S. multilepis from Fernando de Noronha Island and Atol das Rocas, Brazil; S. rava from Tobago, Trinidad and Tobago; S. sella from Tobago, Trinidad and Tobago, all in the S. sluiteri complex; and in the S. fasciata complex, S. smithvanizi from Buck Island Reef National Monument (St. Croix), Navassa Island, St. Barthelemy, and Dominica. Starksia fasciata is restricted in distribution to the Bahamas and northern Cuba. We provide an identification key and diagnostic characters for the 21 western Atlantic species (those species in the S. ocellata complex are diagnosed only in the key). The descriptions herein bring the total number of recognized western Atlantic species of Starksia to 21.