RESEARCH ARTICLE
Two new species in the spike-fin
fairy-wrasse species complex (Teleostei: Labridae:
Cirrhilabrus) from the Indian Ocean
Benjamin C. Victor
Abstract
The western and central Indian
Ocean population of the fairy wrasse, Cirrhilabrus
rubriventralis, is here split into three allopatric
species: the type species from the Red Sea; C.
rubeus n. sp., a new central Indian Ocean species
from Sri Lanka and the Maldives; and C. africanus
n. sp., a new east African coastal species. The three
species are mainly differentiated by the color patterns
of terminal-phase (TP) males. The two new species
diverge from C. rubriventralis in the sequence
of the barcode-mtDNA COI marker by 2.6% and 0.5%,
respectively (pairwise distance; 2.7% and 0.5% K2P
distance). The Indian Ocean species complex made up
of the 8 spike-fin species allied with C. rubriventralis
is now one of the larger species complexes among labrid
reef fishes, showing an interesting pattern of allopatric
sibling species dividing up the region, as well as
the occurrence of localized microendemic species in
Indonesia and the Timor Sea. The species complex includes
some species that share mtDNA lineages (phenovariant
species), as well as others up to 2.9% divergent in
sequence. A neighbor-joining tree and genetic distance
matrix is presented for 7 of the 8 known species in
the complex.
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CITATION:
Victor, B.C. (2016) Two new
species in the spike-fin fairy-wrasse species complex
(Teleostei: Labridae: Cirrhilabrus) from the
Indian Ocean. Journal of the Ocean Science Foundation,
23, 21-50.
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.163217
publication date: 25 October
2016
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