Hippocampus reidi, Ginsburg 1933

Sara A. Lourie, Riley A. Pollom & Sarah J. Foster, 2016, A global revision of the Seahorses Hippocampus Rafinesque 1810 (Actinopterygii: Syngnathiformes): Taxonomy and biogeography with recommendations for further research, Zootaxa 4146 (1), pp. 1-66 : 37-38

H. reidi Ginsburg 1933

English common names. Slender Seahorse, Brazilian seahorse, longsnout seahorse, long-snout seahorse. Synonyms. H. obtusus Ginsburg 1933 , H. poeyi Howell and Riviero 1934 .

Distribution. Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Brazil, Cayman Islands, Colombia, Cuba, French Guiana, Grenada, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, St. Lucia, Suriname, Turks and Caicos Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, USA (North Carolina to Texas), Venezuela, Virgin Islands ( US and UK).

Holotype. USNM 86590. Paratypes: USNM 223673.

Type locality. Grenada, West Indies.

Notes. Both H. obtusus and H. poeyi are juvenile specimens that conform to H. reidi meristically and morphologically, and are hence synonymised. Hippocampus reidi is thought to be part of the H. kuda complex ( Teske et al. 2005), and is very closely related to H. algiricus ( Casey et al. 2004; Silveira et al. 2014). Indeed the Barcode of Life places them both in the same BIN group, with an average within-group divergence of 1.28% ( BOLD 2016). Research is needed to determine whether gene flow across the Atlantic Ocean takes place between H. reidi and H. algiricus , but we retain them both as valid species here due to the large geographic distance and entire ocean basin between the two populations.