Book Review: The Amazing World of Flyingfish, by Steve N. G. Howell

In June of last year, I was standing on the deck of a ferry in Taiwan, headed for the island of Lüdao (commonly known as Green Island), keeping an eye out for any interesting sights. I was particularly intrigued by the seabirds that I kept seeing flying away from the ferry. For some time, I couldn't make out exactly what kind of bird they were: they were small, and flew very quickly. Most oddly, they never seemed to rise very far above the water; I kept waiting for one to get higher so that I could get a better idea of its shape, but every time I tried to keep an eye on one individual, it would seem to disappear, as if it had re-entered the water. Eventually, understanding dawned: what I was seeing were not birds at all, but flying fish.

Flyingfish (Exocoetidae) are prominent members of the pelagic ecosystem in tropical waters. For some tropical seabirds (actual birds this time, such as boobies or frigatebirds), they are among the primary source of food. Steve Howell, author of The Amazing World of Flyingfish (Princeton University Press, who were kind enough to send me a review copy), put together a guide to flyingfish after travelling from New Zealand to Australia on the Spirit of Enderby as part of a cruise that was primarily supposed to be for bird-watching. But, as Howell explains, "birds tend to be few in the blue equatorial waters (remember, it's a desert, even though it's full of water), and attention sooner or later shifts to flyingfish".

The Amazing World of Flyingfish is not a large book: all up, it barely makes it over 50 pages. But almost every one of those pages is adorned with spectacular photographs that capture the grace and variety of flyingfish. The images chosen work wonders in expressing the liveliness of their subjects. My favourite image technically doesn't even show the fish at all: on p. 16, a triptych of photographs showing the process of re-entering the water shows first the fish in flight, then closing its fins as it approaches the water's surface, and then simply the splash as it disappears below. The text, geared towards a younger or a lay audience, provides a general overview of flyingfish, with chapters given self-explanatory titles such as, "What is a flyingfish?", "How big are they?", "How do they fly?"

And yet, I also found Howell's book frustrating. The numerous different flyingfish varieties depicted are labelled with vernacular names largely of his own creation, such as Atlantic patchwing, sargassum midget, Pacific necromancer. Zoological names are, for the most part, not provided. As Howell explains, most field guides to marine fish are written for biologists or fisherman, and are oriented around identifying a specimen after it has been caught, often relying on features (such as scale counts) that are not discernible in photographs of live individuals. As a result, the identity of most of Howell's 'field varieties' remains uncertain. But then, in another section of the book, we are told that one juvenile morph "was examined genetically and proved to be a young Atlantic Necromancer" (capitalisation Howell's), implying that the zoological identity of this species, at least, is known.

As Howell points out, "there remains an unfilled niche for a field guide that portrays flyingfish as observers see them in the air". Howell has produced an attractive and engaging introduction to the world of flyingfish, and it should provide an inspiration to fill that niche.

The Sweetest of Lips

Oblique-banded sweetlips Plectorhinchus lineatus, copyright Richard Ling.

In an earlier post on this site, I referred to a fish of the family Lethrinidae being known by the name of "sweetlips". However, as is usually the way with fish vernacular names, there is more than one family of fishes to which this name can be applied. 'Sweetlips' is also the vernacular name for fishes in the Plectorhinchinae.

The Plectorhinchinae is most commonly treated as a subfamily within the family Haemulidae, the grunts (some sources will place 'Plectorhynchidae' as a separate family, and no, that wasn't a typo: read on). Plectorhinchines are distinguished from other subfamily of haemulids, the Haemulinae, by characters including a longer dorsal fin and the presence of at least four prominent lateral line pores under the chin (Johnson 1980). The name 'sweetlips' refers to the prominent lips of mature individuals of two of the genera of plectorhinchines, Plectorhinchus and Diagramma, which are often a distinct colour from the rest of the head. Members of the third genus, Parapristipoma, have the lips not quite so prominent, and are commonly referred to as 'grunts' like the remaining haemulids.

African striped grunts Parapristipoma octolineatum, copyright Juan Cuetos.

The plectorhinchines are found around tropical reefs in the Indo-West Pacific and East Atlantic, with a single species, the rubberlip grunt Plectorhinchus mediterraneus, being found in the in the Mediterranean and Black Seas. No plectorhinchines are found on either side of the Americas. They are nocturnal predators of benthic invertebrates, emerging at night from the secluded crevices and overhangs where they spend the day. Most are medium-sized fish, though the painted sweetlips Diagramma pictum can get up to 90 cm. They are popular with fishers; Smith (1962) referred to them as "among the best if not the best eating fishes of the reef-haunting species". Many species can go through significant changes in coloration as they mature: spotted juveniles may become unicoloured adults, or blotchy babies may mature into stripes. The differences are great enough that juveniles and adults have often been mistaken for separate species.

Juvenile oriental sweetlips Plectorhinchus vittatus, copyright Jan Messersmith. The adult form of this species resembles the oblique-banded sweetlips in the top photo on this post.

But failure to associate parents with their children is not the only way in which this group has been dogged by confusing taxonomy. The name of the type genus has been variously spelled Plectorhinchus or Plectorhynchus, with the family name varying accordingly (it seems that 'Plectorhinchus' is the correct spelling). A surprising number of sources (e.g. Tavera et al. 2012) seem to have it both ways, with the genus being called Plectorhinchus but the higher taxon being called Plectorhynchinae (R. van der Laan et al. confirm the correct family-name spelling). Meanwhile, Smith (1962) argued for the use of the name Gaterin in place of Plectorhinchus, and called the family Gaterinidae. And if you have any interest in the vagaries of taxonomy, settle in: this is going to be a whole thing.

The name 'Gaterin' dates from what is usually known as Forsskål's (1775) Descriptiones animalium, which Fricke (2008) argued should be attributed to Niebuhr (see, right from the first sentence it's confusing). Peter Simon Forsskål and Carsten Niebuhr were members of a Danish scientific expedition in 1761 to 1763 to the Red Sea (though Forsskål himself was Swedish, but that's another story). Forsskål was the expedition's naturalist, while Niebuhr was there as a geographer. The history of the expedition, and of the composition of Descriptiones animalium, has been summarised by Fricke (2008). The expedition was particularly ill-fated; of six original members, Niebuhr was the only one to make it back to Denmark alive. After returning to Denmark, Niebuhr started preparing Forsskål's notes for publication. However, he found this no easy task. Forsskål had not prepared a single manuscript, but made notes on various scraps of paper; in the end, Niebuhr suspected that many of these scraps had gone missing. As an engineer, Niebuhr knew little Latin and even less biology, so he obtained the services of an academic adviser. The identity of this adviser was not divulged in the final publication by Niebuhr himself, but he has since been identified as the Danish naturalist Johann Christian Fabricius. The relationship between Niebuhr and Fabricius was not entirely positive (Niebuhr later stated that his adviser on Descriptiones animalium had been a 'strange fellow'), and Fabricius does not seem to have spent any more time on the Forsskål notes than he absolutely had to. As a result, the final publication that emerged was partly Forsskål, partly Niebuhr, partly Fabricius, and all dog's breakfast.

The name 'Gaterin' is listed by Forsskål/Niebuhr/Fabricius as one of the sub-divisions of the genus Sciaena, and Smith's (1962) revival of the name was based on the assumption that Forsskål intended these subdivisions to represent what we would now call subgenera. As such, Gaterin published in 1775 would clearly be an earlier name than Plectorhinchus published in 1802. Smith further supported this interpretation by pointing out that two names listed by 'Forsskål' as subdivisions of Chaetodon, Acanthurus and Abudefduf, had since been widely accepted as names for separate fish genera. There were no grounds, he claimed, for taking Abudefduf as valid but refusing Gaterin.

As it happens, Forsskål probably never intended either Gaterin or Abudefduf to represent generic names of any kind. It seems that his notes had used local Arabic names to refer to taxa to which he had not yet supplied formal Latin names. When Fabricius compiled these notes, he simply used the Arabic names as formal names, probably because he just didn't care. When 'Forsskål' referred to 'Gaterin' in his introductory paragraph for Sciaena, he was probably referring to the individual species known in Arabia as gaterin rather than any formal group. 'Abudefduf' may have been similarly inadvertent, but long usage as a genus name means that it should probably be retained whatever its original status. No such argument can be marshalled in favour of 'Gaterin', whose usage in place of Plectorhinchus has been minimal.

And I can think of no better response to all that than the expression of this painted sweetlips Diagramma pictum. Copyright John Natoli.

REFERENCES

Fricke, R. 2008. Authorship, availability and validity of fish names described by Peter (Pehr) Simon Forsskål and Johann Christian Fabricius in the ‘Descriptiones animalium’ by Carsten Niebuhr in 1775 (Pisces). Stuttgarter Beiträge zur Naturkunde A, Neue Serie 1: 1–76.

Johnson, G. D. 1980. The limits and relationships of the Lutjanidae and associated families. Bulletin of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography 24: 1–114.

Smith, J. L. B. 1962. Fishes of the family Gaterinidae of the western Indian Ocean and the Red Sea with a resume of all known Indo Pacific species. Ichthyological Bulletin 25: 469-502.

Tavera, J. J., A. Acero P., E. B. Balart & G. Bernardi. 2012. Molecular phylogeny of grunts (Teleostei, Haemulidae), with an emphasis on the ecology, evolution, and speciation history of New World species. BMC Evolutionary Biology 12: 57. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/12/57.

Sleepers

Hawaiian sleeper Eleotris sandwicensis, from the Hawaii Biological Survey.

Fishes of the genus Eleotris are a group of gobioids commonly known as the spinycheek sleepers. I haven't found a definite statement as to why they're called sleepers, but presumably it's because, as sit-and-wait ambush predators, they spend a lot of time lying around on the bottom. Eleotris species are found in tropical and subtropical waters around the world, mostly in estuaries and freshwater. They are smallish fish, with most species seeming to be in the ten to twenty centimetre size range. The 'spinycheek' part of the vernacular name refers to the presence of a hook-like spine on the lower corner of the preoperculum (the bone running between the cheek and the gill cover on the side of the head). This spine may be covered with tissue and so not always readily visible, but Pusey et al. (2004) note that it 'can be easily detected by running a thumbnail lightly, and carefully, along the preoperculum margin'. Carefully, I think, is the operative word here.

Eleotris oxycephala, from Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences.

The species of Eleotris are mostly a conservative bunch appearance-wise, and the genus seems to have gotten a reputation for being difficult to work with taxonomically (it doesn't help matters that for a long time 'Eleotris' was something of a dumping ground for generalised gobioids). The Japanese species were revised in 1967 by Akihito (yes, that Akihito), the West African species have been revised by Miller (1998), and the North and South American species by Pezold & Cage (2002), but species from the remainder of the Indo-Pacific remain unrevised. There has been some disagreement over the status of a group of New World species classified in the genus Erotelis, which resemble Eleotris species but are generally more elongate and have higher numbers of fin rays (Pezold & Cage 2002). Miller (1998) felt that this genus should be synonymised with Eleotris, but Pezold & Cage (2002) argued that its members were distinct enough to be kept separate. A molecular phylogenetic analysis of the gobioids by Thacker & Hardman (2005) suggested that 'Erotelis' is nested within Eleotris, which may support their synonymisation.

Dusky sleeper Eleotris fusca, photographed by C. Appleby.

The sleepers are amphidromous, meaning they spend part of their life in the sea. Sleepers enter the sea as larvae, returning to fresher waters as they mature. As a result of this marine stage in the life cycle, individual species of Eleotris may be widespread and can often be found in places such as oceanic islands that lack populations of permanently freshwater species. It has even been suggested they may cross oceans: Miller (1998), noting similarities between species on either side of the Atlantic, suggested that this may be the result of trans-Atlantic dispersal. Among the evidence cited in favour of this possibility was the record in 1987 of a specimen of the northern South American species Eleotris pisonis from the island of St Helena in the mid-Atlantic. However, Miller also noted that the amount of time it would take to disperse across the Atlantic is greater that the time it would take for the larva to develop to maturity (and mature Eleotris are not known from the open sea). Pezold and Cage (2002) were more skeptical about the possibility of trans-Atlantic dispersal, even though they admitted to being unable to identify any characters distinguishing the Caribbean E. amblyopsis from the West African E. daganensis. They queried whether the St Helena record may have been an individual transported in ship ballast water, rather than an unaided dispersal.

REFERENCES

Miller, P. J. 1998. The West African species of Eleotris and their systematic affinities (Teleostei: Gobioidei). Journal of Natural History 32 (2): 273-296.

Pezold, F., & B. Cage. 2002. A review of the spinycheek sleepers, genus Eleotris (Teleostei: Eleotridae), of the western hemisphere, with comparison to the West African species. Tulane Studies in Zoology and Botany 31: 19–63.

Pusey, B., M. Kennard & A. Arthington. 2004. Freshwater Fishes of North-eastern Australia. CSIRO Publishing: Collingwood.

Thacker, C. E., & M. A. Hardman. 2005. Molecular phylogeny of basal gobioid fishes: Rhyacichthyidae, Odontobutidae, Xenisthmidae, Eleotridae (Teleostei: Perciformes: Gobioidei). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 37: 858-871.