Elops smithi McBride, Rocha, Ruiz-Carus and Bowen 2010

• Main Authors: Smith-Vaniz, William F., Jelks, Howard L.
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2014
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Taxonomy; Animalia; Chordata; Actinopterygii; Elopiformes; Elopidae; Elops; Elops smithi; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5114600; https://zenodo.org/record/5114600

Elops smithi McBride, Rocha, Ruiz-Carus and Bowen 2010 — Southern Ladyfish Listed as Elops saurus Linnaeus by Fowler (1951:25) and as "common" by Clavijo et al. (1980:5). Justification: ANSP 73294 (2) and ANSP 80628 (2), all ANSP specimens based on leptocephali; ZMUC P.17906 (1, 273 mm SL), St. Croix, Jan. 1842. Distribution: McBride and Horodysky (2004) and McBride et al. (2010) WA (BD*, BA, GA, VI, LA, WC, nSA, sSA). Remarks: Only one species of ladyfish, Elops saurus Linnaeus, was thought to occur in the western Atlantic Ocean until Smith (1989e) showed that leptocephali from the area had a bimodal distribution of myomere counts, indicating the existence of two distinct morphs. He identified the low-count morph (68–72 preanal and 74–78 total myomeres) as Elops sp. and the high-count morph (76–80 preanal and 79–86 total myomeres) as E. saurus . Although both species are virtually identical externally, they differ in number of vertebrae and, except in areas of sympatry, in counts of lateral-line scales (102–118 in E. smithi versus 119–128 in E. saurus ), have distinct mitochondrial DNA sequences and mostly allopatric distributions (McBride et al. , 2010). Elops smithi is distributed throughout the Bahamas, Caribbean Sea and northern coast of South America, whereas E. saurus has a more northern distribution occurring in the Gulf of Mexico and off the east coast of the United States. : Published as part of Smith-Vaniz, William F. & Jelks, Howard L., 2014, Marine and inland fishes of St. Croix, U. S. Virgin Islands: an annotated checklist, pp. 1-120 in Zootaxa 3803 (1) on pages 21-22, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.3803.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/4917823 : {"references": ["McBride, R. S., Rocha C. A., Ruiz-Carus, R. & Bowen, B. W. (2010) A new species of ladyfish, of the genus Elops (Elopiformes: Elopidae), from the western Atlantic Ocean. Zootaxa, 2346, 29 - 41.", "Fowler, H. W. (1951) Some fishes from St. Croix, West Indies. The Fish Culturist, 31 (4), 25 - 27.", "Clavijo, I. E., Yntema, J. A. & Ogden, J. C. (1980) An annotated list of the fishes of St. Croix, U. S. Virgin Islands. West Indies Lab, Special Publication, 2 nd Ed., 1 - 49.", "McBride, R. S. & Horodysky, A. Z. (2004) Mechanisms maintaining sympatric distributions of two ladyfish (Elopidae: Elops) morphs in the Gulf of Mexico and western North Atlantic Ocean. Limnology and Oceanography, 49, 1173 - 1181. http: // dx. doi. org / 10.4319 / lo. 2004.49.4.1173", "Smith, D. G. (1989 e) Order Elopiformes; Families Elopidae, Megalopidae, and Albulidae: Leptocephali. Memoirs of the Sears Foundation for Marine Research, 2 (9), 961 - 972."]}