Notarius Gill

Ricardo Betancur-R. & Arturo Acero P., 2006, A new species of Notarius (Siluriformes: Ariidae) from the Colombian Pacific., Zootaxa 1249, pp. 47-59 : 47

[[ Notarius Gill ]]

The amphiamerican sea catfish genus Notarius Gill was recently revised by Betancur-R. and Acero P. (2004). Notarius includes at least 14 species, with seven distributed in the eastern Pacific (EP). The monophyly of the genus is strongly supported by molecular evidence obtained from the sequences of five mitochondrial genes and one nuclear gene [3900 base pairs (bp)] (Betancur-R., 2003; Betancur-R. and Acero P., 2004). This claim was not supported by Kailola (2004), who placed the species of Notarius sensu Betancur-R. and Acero P. (2004) in the genera Hemiarius Bleeker , Ariopsis Gill , Aspistor Jordan & Evermann , and Sciades Mueller & Troschel , as well as two species recognized as incertae sedis (Table 1). It is noteworthy, however, that none of the species assigned by Betancur-R. and Acero P. (2004) in Notarius were included in Kailola (2004)’s phylogenetic analysis. Marceniuk and Ferraris (2003), based on the results of Marceniuk’s (2003) unpublished dissertation, also proposed a different classification scheme for New World ariids, placing most of the species of Notarius sensu Betancur-R. and Acero P. (2004) in Notarius (only four species), Aspistor , Arius Valenciennes , and Hexanematichthys Bleeker (Table 1). In summary, despite the recent efforts to resolve the taxonomy of the Ariidae, its generic nomenclature is still unstable.