Sparisoma atomarium (Poey, 1861)

Joao Luiz Gasparini, Jean-Christophe Joyeux & Sergio R. Floeter, 2003, Sparisoma tuiupiranga, a new species of parrotfish (Perciformes: Labroidei: Scaridae) from Brazil, with comments on the evolution of the genus., Zootaxa 384, pp. 1-14 : 1

[[ Sparisoma atomarium (Poey, 1861) ]]

Randall (1965) based his redescription of Sparisoma atomarium (Poey, 1861) on 68 individuals from the greater Caribbean Province (Bermuda, Florida Keys, Bahamas, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Martinique, and off eastern Honduras). All individuals were small, with the largest individual 81.4mm SL. Besides the redescription pictures in Randall (1965), published photographic records are available for Bahamas, Cayman, Anguilla, Santa Lucia and Venezuela ( Cervigón, 1994; Randall, 1996; Humann & Deloach, 2002). This diminutive scarid species was considered to have a widespread but strongly disjunct distribution in the Western Atlantic (Joyeux et al, 2001; Moura et al., 2001), being absent from the tropical northeastern Brazilian coast. However, the differences between the northern and southern components of the species, obvious in size, and recently supported by genetic data (Giacomo Bernardi, pers. comm.), prompted a close examination of Brazilian specimens and a detailed comparison with northern counterparts.