Pholis ornata (Girard, 1854)

Love, Milton S., Bizzarro, Joseph J., Cornthwaite, Maria, Frable, Benjamin W. & Maslenikov, Katherine P., 2021, Checklist of marine and estuarine fishes from the Alaska-Yukon Border, Beaufort Sea, to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, Zootaxa 5053 (1), pp. 1-285 : 190

Pholis ornata (Girard, 1854) .

Saddleback Gunnel. To 30.5 cm (12 in) TL ( Miller and Lea 1972). Vancouver Island, southern British Columbia ( Eschmeyer and Herald 1983) to Point Loma, southern California (Kevin Lee, pers. comm. to M.L.). Peden and Hughes (1984) demonstrated that records of P. ornata from Alaska were misidentified P. laeta . Consequently, we must view recent reports of occurrence in Alaska with scepticism, especially since those specimens were not retained for verification. Benthic; depth: intertidal to 60 m (198 ft) ( Love et al. 2005). Reports of P. ornata from Hokkaido (e.g., Hatooka in Nakabo 2002), the Sea of Japan, and Korean Peninsula are probably the western Pacific species Pholis nea ( Peden and Hughes 1984) or these forms are conspecific or subspecies ( Mecklenburg 2003). A “ Pholis ornata ” from the Gulf of Alaska (Personal communication: University of Washington, Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture Fish Collection, Seattle, Washington, UW 005206) is a Pholis laeta (Cope, 1873) (Katherine Maslenikov) .