William Eschmeyer, Ph.D., Senior Curator of Ichthyology

This wonderful specimen of red scorpionfish was kept in the Inoshima aquarium in Japan. It appeared on the cover of a magazine because it periodically shed "skin." It was not skin but more like a cuticular layer, or a layer of hard mucous. This occurs in other species of scorpionfishes and fishes and may be a way sedentary fishes rid themselves of unwanted growth of such things as algae. The aquarium sent the fish to me when it died, as I am a specialist in these kinds of fishes. Even though it came to me without color (as color is lost on preservation), upon examination I instinctively knew that it was a new species.

Typically when we describe new animals we have at least several specimens of the animal under investigation so we can rule out differences between males and females, size-related differences, differences that may occur geographically over the range of species, and to rule out atypical or abnormal specimens. In this case I had only one specimen. I examined specimens of the nearest relatives, counting and measuring fins and body parts and found differences that showed that the Japanese specimen was a species never before described. Therefore, two Japanese authors and I prepared a manuscript describing and naming this species that was published in the Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences. This fish was very distinctive because of its bright red coloration and the white streak below each eye in living specimens. When we name new species, we follow a set of published "rules" and the name is Latinized. In this case we selected the name argoliba which means white teardrop.

This became about the 50,000th species of fish to be named and described in the scientific literature. (An even more spectacular relative, Rhinopias aphanes, from New Caledonia was described as new in the same publication). However, on average, each fish species actually has been named twice. Multiple names for one species are called synonyms and arise when two scientists each think they have a new species, but a third researcher discovers that the two are in fact one species. There are an estimated total of 25,000 valid species of fishes, and we are still finding more than 200 new species each year.

California Academy of Sciences Ichthyology Department

The Catalog of the Species of Fishes

Ichthyology Web Resources: Systematics

ICLARM: International Center for Living Aquatic Resources

Scorpionfishes - Scorpaenidae

Venomous Fishes

Return to the People, Places, and Things Page.

Return to the Research Home Page of the California Academy of Sciences.

California Academy of Sciences, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California