Elacatinus Jordan

Michael S. Taylor & Lad Akins, 2007, Two new species of Elacatinus (Teleostei: Gobiidae) from the Mexican coast of the Gulf of Mexico., Zootaxa 1425, pp. 45-51 : 45

[[ Elacatinus Jordan ]]

In the Neotropics, one of the largest genera of gobies is Elacatinus Jordan with two subgenera, Tigrigobius Fowler and Elacatinus (Hoese 1971; Eschmeyer 1998). (We distinguish between the genus and subgenus Elacatinus with sensu lato [s.l.] and sensu stricto [s.s.], respectively.) The subgenus Tigrigobius has five nominal species in the eastern Pacific Ocean (but see Hoese & Reader 2001 for a suggested synonymy) and seven species in the western Atlantic Ocean. In contrast, the subgenus Elacatinus has only a single species in the eastern Pacific, but 15 species are found in the western Atlantic. Together, the 22 western Atlantic species of Elacatinus (s.l.) are distributed variously from Bermuda and the coast of the southeastern United States, southward throughout the Bahamas and Caribbean Sea, to the reefs and offshore islands of Brazil ( Böhlke & Robins 1968; Colin 1975; Sazima et al. 1997; Colin 2002; Guimarães et al. 2004). However, the genus is notably depauperate in the Gulf of Mexico, with only three species, E. oceanops Jordon , E. xanthiprora ( Boehlke & Robins) and E. macrodon (Beebe and Tee-Van) , previously reported.