Damselfish are one of the largest families of marine fish with over 400 described species and counting. Due to their global distribution, wide range of forms and impressive diversity, saying that understanding and characterizing their taxonomy is nothing short of an understatement.
A massive paper just published by Tang et. al. has just attempted to make some sense of some of the bloated genera which have been a catch-all for a huge number of damselfish species, especially theChromis. This new publication is a very dense and deep dive into the nuts and bolts of ichthyology and we might have some training in reading scientific papers, but with more than 500 citations the details go way above our head.
我们必须感谢我们的前稀有鱼类专家Tea Yi Kaifor spotlighting the taxonomic revisions to some of the more interesting damselfish species includingAzurina brevirostris,and the resurrection of thePycnochromisgenus for some of the smaller damselfish which used to be classified asChromis. The vanderbilt ‘chromis’ is nowPycnochromis vanderbiltiand is joined byP. leucuraandP. iomelas.[BioOne]
