Pseudojuloides zeus, a new deep-reef wrasse (Perciformes: Labridae) from Micronesia in the western Pacific Ocean

The new species, Pseudojuloides zeus, is described from two specimens obtained from Majuro Atoll in the Marshall Islands and Palau in Micronesia, western Pacific Ocean. The species is distinguished by two prominent jagged blue stripes along the body and a dark spot at the base of the mid-dorsal fin. P. zeus is a rarely seen fish, found only on particularly deep reefs and, thus far, from only two locations. The single paratype from Palau was collected at about 80m during the 1997 ‘Twilight Zone’ Expedition by the Bishop Museum and, since then, a series of specimens have been collected for the aquarium trade from similarly deep reefs at Majuro. The nearest relative is P. mesostigma, from Japan, Philippines, Indonesia, Vanuatu, Tonga, and the Great Barrier Reef, which shares the very slender body and has a dark area on the mid-dorsal fin and body, but does not have the distinctive two blue stripes. The barcode mtDNA COI sequence of the new species is 5.3% different from the sequence of P. mesostigma (minimum interspecific distance, K2P model). A neighbor-joining tree and genetic distance matrix is presented for 11 of the 13 known species in the genus Pseudojuloides.