Five new species of Western Atlantic stardrums, Stellifer (Perciformes: Sciaenidae) with a key to Atlantic Stellifer species Chao, Ning Labbish Carvalho-Filho, Alfredo Santos, Jonas De Andrade Zootaxa 2021 2021-06-25 4991 3 434 466 7MB8 278772 Oken 1817 [348,444,151,178] Actinopterygii Sciaenidae Stellifer Animalia Perciformes 29 463 Chordata genus  The subfamily Stelliferinaeis unique within Sciaenidaeby having a two-chambered gas bladder and an enlarged pair of lapillus, about the same size as the sagitta. Both characters are also present in the Indo-West Pacific  Johnius(tribe Johniini) which has a slightly enlarged lapillus but less than one-third the size of the sagitta, they also have an expanded anterior end of the gas bladder ( Chao 1986; Chao et al.2019). Thus, because they are distant in sciaenid phylogeny, their share a last common ancestor dating from the Late Oligocene to Early Miocene expansions ( Lo et al.2015), these characters are probably convergent. In this study, we found that Stellifer species (e.g.  S. collettei) can show significant geographic variation. Recent studies of Southwestern Atlantic sciaenids, such as  Bairdiella( Marceniuk et al.2019),  Macrodon( Carvalho-Filho et al.2010),  Menticirrhus( Marceniuk et al.2020), and  Isopisthus( Guimarães-Costa et al.2020)have shown that cryptic species are not uncommon. These studies demonstrated that the hidden diversity is often found in species caught as fisheries by-catch, reinforcing the need for detailed studies on taxonomy and zoogeography that can lead to better conservation management. We expect that  Stelliferand widely distributed sciaenids (e.g.  Cynoscionand  Micropogonias) might have similar patterns, when samples become available for further molecular and morphological study.