Published November 29, 2017 | Version v1
Journal article Open

Review of the Indo-Pacific Pseudojuloides cerasinus species complex with a description of two new species (Teleostei: Labridae)

  • 1. Ocean Science Foundation, 4051 Glenwood, Irvine, CA 92604 and Guy Harvey Research Institute, Nova Southeastern University, 8000 North Ocean Drive, Dania Beach, FL 33004

Description

The Pseudojuloides cerasinus species complex is a paradigm of the application of DNA taxonomy to coral-reef fish classification. Once considered a pan-Indo-Pacific species ranging from South Africa to the Hawaiian Islands, P. cerasinus has been divided into three different allopatric species in the Indian Ocean, based on differences in male-display color patterns and relatively deep genetic divergences. In this study, the Pacific Ocean populations are shown to represent four species: the original type population in the Hawaiian Islands; a new western Pacific species Pseudojuloides splendens, ranging from Japan to Australia and across most of the South Pacific; a new species Pseudojuloides polynesica, from French Polynesia and the Line Islands; and Pseudojuloides pyrius Randall & Randall, 1981, endemic to the Marquesas Islands. The mtDNA lineages of the complex diverge from 3.5–11.3% in the sequence of the mtDNA-barcode marker COI. The species illustrate some of the more interesting phenomena in the evolution of species complexes among coral reef fishes: the species differences are mainly in male-display color patterns, the degree of phenotypic divergence does not correlate with the amount of genetic divergence (the most different-appearing species is one of the least divergent), and a corollary that the various genetic lineages must be distinguished to avoid paraphyly in the taxonomic construct of the species complex. A neighbor-joining tree and genetic distance matrix are presented for the seven species of the P. cerasinus species complex.

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