Pacific Plate Biogeography, with Special Reference to Shorefishes

NUMBER 367
globally, except that none occurs on the Pacific
Plate other than marginally. The eastern limits
of the family in the Indo-Pacific are almost, if not
entirely, identical with those of the croakers,
Sciaenidae (Figure 38). As far as known, all the
species have large eggs and are mouthbrooders
(see discussion under Apogonidae), and most
spend some portion of their life history in estuaries.
Several species are restricted to freshwater,
and it is probable that the family is derived from
a freshwater ancestor (W.R. Taylor, pers. comm.).
There are three, notably erroneous, distribution
records for ariids in the Indo-Pacific. Arius
tachycephalus was described by Giinther (1864)
from Hawaii. This species is a common one limited
to the eastern Pacific. Kner and Steindachner
(1866) described Arius graeffi from Samoa, based
on a Museum Godeffroy specimen, and Schmeltz
(1879, reference examined for me by W.F. Smith-
Vaniz) listed Arius thalassinus from the Tonga
Islands, also based on a Museum Godeffroy specimen.
No other records of ariids are known for
Samoa and Tonga, and there is none for the
nearby, and larger, Fiji Islands.
ATHERINIDAE
The silversides are a large, circumglobal family
of small, free-swimming, close-shore fishes. Most
of the species are marine, but some are strictly
freshwater (Celebes, North America) inhabitants.
There are four marine genera with about 18
species in the Indo-Pacific. All the genera, but
only six of the species, occur nonmarginally on
the Pacific Plate, and one of the species is endemic
to the Hawaiian Islands. (W. Ivantsoff, pers.
comm.).
AULOSTOMIDAE
The trumpetfishes comprise a single genus, Aulostomus,
and three species (Wheeler, 1955): one
limited to the western Atlantic, one to the eastern
Atlantic, and one to the Indo-Pacific (including
the Pacific Plate nonmarginally) and eastern Pacific.
In the latter area it is known only from
offshore islands (Rosenblatt et al., 1972). The
species of Aulostomus are slender, less than 1 m
TL, free swimming, and reef inhabiting.
BALISTIDAE
(not including Monacanthidae)
The triggerfishes comprise 12 genera (Matsuura,
1980; 1981) and about 30 moderately large
(to about 750 mm TL), free-swimming species
with pelagic young. All the genera, except Xenobalistes,
and most of the species occur in the Indo-
Pacific; however, Batistes, otherwise restricted to
the Atlantic and eastern Pacific, occurs in the
Indo-Pacific only in the Hawaiian Islands and
only as a rare straggler (the common eastern
Pacific species Balistes polylepis, which has usually
been misidentified as B. fuscus in Hawaiian references;
J.E. Randall, pers. comm.; I have not
included Balistes in Appendix 2, Table C). All
but one of the native Indo-Pacific genera, Abalistes,
monotypic, occur on the Pacific Plate, but
not all the Indo-Pacific species in these genera
occur on the Plate.
Odonus and Balistapus are monotypic, widely
distributed in, and restricted to, the Indo-Pacific.
Xenobalistes, also monotypic, is known from a
single specimen from the stomach of a marlin
caught off the Mariana Islands.
Canthidermis contains five species (Fedoryako,
1981), one (C. maculatus) present on the Pacific
Plate and distributed in all oceans but the eastern
Pacific; one (C villosus) known only from the Gulf
of Aden, one (C. rotundatus) limited to the Indo-
Pacific), one (C. willughbeii) restricted to the eastern
Pacific, and one (C sufflamen) restricted to the
western Atlantic.
Pseudobalistes contains three species, two (P. fuscus,
P. flavimarginatus) occurring on the Plate as
well as widely distributed in, and restricted to,
the Indo-Pacific, and one (P. naufragium) restricted
to the eastern Pacific.
Melichthys contains three species (the first two
being present on the Plate): one is circumtropically
distributed, one is limited to the
Indo-Pacific and eastern Pacific, and one is limited
to the Indian Ocean (Randall and Klausewitz,
1973).
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