Stiphodon genus of the Goby

[odyssey]

Hi plaalye and Matt.

I use the name of the "Rainbow-color", the "Blue-moon" and the "Orange-fin", but this doesn't mean the single species.
I shared with a group by the feature I tend to distinguish and just nicknamed those.
Each probably includes the species of the plural.
I insist repeatedly, but males of Stiphodon genus changes the color and the pattern drastically.
Therefore the condition that the species ID can be fixed only with one picture is limited.
I think as follows.

1. When there is a great difference beyond the range which can change.
2. When there is a clear difference in the part which doesn't change.
3. When the individual's habitat was the area where only the limited species is there.
4. When a DNA analysis result was identical with the standard specimen which can be trusted.

The pictures by which marketed Stiphodon is recognized as S.atratus and S.elegans are often come across.
But I have not seen a picture of S.atratus which can be trusted by a scientific field survey yet.

S.elegans can see several pictures in reports of the scientific field survey.
It seems different in shape of the first dorsal fin with "Ranbow-color".

http://www.li-an.fr/jyves/Talk_Meyer_Bi ... s_2003.pdf
http://www.bishopmuseum.org/research/pb ... report.pdf
http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/cgi/img_q ... on+elegans
http://w3.u-ryukyu.ac.jp/coe/action/new ... wsl10.html

Hi, Kajsa12.
The feature of that appearance is included in the range of the change in "Rainbow-color".
It wasn't possible to find the certain difference which can be classified only by the appearance.
It's because that's the individual in Palau for certain, that I judged the individual as S. pelewensis.


The progress of analysis technology of DNA sequence is remarkable.
An aquarist of hobbies would be able to request a DNA analysis by pocket money only by small sample of fish fin within 10 years now.
A DNA analysis result of just a little Stihodon is registered with a data base already.
When riches aids with a research fund, a DNA analysis of Stiphodon would be developed at a stroke.

Stiphodon elegans
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/162 ... rt=genbank

Stiphodon ornatus
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/126 ... rt=genbank
http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/Species ... p?ID=27467

for searching and analyzing genetic information (mitochondrial DNA) of Japanese freswater fishes.
http://gedimap.zool.kyoto-u.ac.jp/index ... a=2&lang=e

National Center for Biotechnology Information Databases
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez

Dr. Mukai is telling a DNA analysis result of Stiphodon short separately in his site.
http://homepage2.nifty.com/PhD-mukai/La ... hodon.html

Before, he has shown the family tree of mitocondria DNA of Stiphodon he analyzed to a Japanese web forum.
There were no schedules which do academic release of his research result, so he showed that for us.
Unfortunately the thread isn't seen now.
I remember his research result.
The one which made simple is indicated here.
The original included a lot of individual's analysis results, but I made it simple.
The length of the branch of a crosswise direction is important to guess at a time, it's lost by my transcription.


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┏━━━━━┫ Genus Sicyopterus
┃
┃━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┏━━━━ F
┃━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┏━━━━━┫ < "Orange-fin"
┃━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┃━━━━━┗━━ M
┃━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┃━━━━━━┏ S.pelewensis?(Guam)
┃━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┏━━━━━━┫━━━━━┏┫
┫━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┃━━━━━━┃┏━━━━┫┗━ S.pelewensis?(Palau)
┃━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┃━━━━━━┗┫━━━━┗━ <"Rainbow-color"
┃━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┏━━━━━━┫━━━━━━━┗━━━━━━ S.imperiorientis
┃━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┃━━━━━━┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ S.elegans
┃━━━━━━━━━━━━┏━━━━━━┫
┃━━━━━━━━━━━━┃━━━━━━┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ? S.alcedo ?
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┃━━━━━┃━━━━━━┃━━━━━━━━━━━━━･････< "Blue-moon"
┃━━━━━┃━━━━━━┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ S.atropurpureus
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┗━━━━━┫ Genus Stiphodon
━━━━━━┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ S.percnopterygionus

[Matt]

Hey Odyssey, thanks for the detailed answer! I agree with you that male S. elegans have an elongated ray in the first dorsal that makes it easy to tell apart from these 'rainbow' types. It actually looks closer to S. julieni by the pictures of live specimens in the description of the latter.

I notice in Dr. Mukai's DNA tree that he considers S. pelewensis to also occur on Guam as well as in Palau. Similar-looking but unidentified populations from nearby Saipan can be seen on Taro's page:
http://www17.tok2.com/home2/tarogoby/zu ... h_spn.html

In the absence of further information I think it would be reasonable to class all these as variants of S. pelewensis for now while noting there may be more than a single species involved. What do you think?

The picture of S. atratus I posted was taken in the Louisiade Archipelago, very far from the type locality. I'll try to find out how it was identified as such.

Edit - does your male from Palau have the long or short first dorsal fin as described by Taro? Thank you!

[odyssey]

Hi Matt.
I could remember and find the paper of S.atratus field survey thanks to your hint.
http://hbs.bishopmuseum.org/publications/pdf/tr45.pdf
http://www.marlin1charters.com.au/png.html

Is paper about Stiphodon julieni this?
It seems that a way of a distinction with S.elegans is written conversantly.
Stiphodon julieni n. sp., male MNHN 2002-7, Panui River, Rapa, French Polynesia,
http://www.onema.fr/BFPP/bfpp/Article/364/364p161.pdf

In the absence of further information I think it would be reasonable to class all these as variants of S. pelewensis for now while noting there may be more than a single species involved. What do you think?

Saipan2004
http://www17.tok2.com/home2/tarogoby/ri ... an002.html

Saipan Stiphodon

Micronesia Stiphodon

Taro also goes to Guam in 2008 and is observing local Stiphodon.
http://www17.tok2.com/home2/tarogoby/ri ... r_guam.htm

Palau Stiphodon
http://lntreasures.com/palauff.html
http://palauxpalau.com/column/cat30/

Dr. Mukai was putting "?" on the end of ID .
I should put question mark"?" on the ID, too.
The ID for the creature species is the name that man adds artificially.
I think there may not be always a clear boundary line in the natural world.

Classification of the species by the old technique based on the appearance would be corrected one after another from now on.
There was such news last year.
The fish which seemed different 3 species was 1 species actually.
http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/news/lib/195

Even if a creature is in the same species, They have the potentiality which becomes the various appearances. A guppy, a dog and a cat are a good example.

Even if it looks just similar for man conversely, a creature also uses the tone and the smell and classifies a partner.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptic_species_complex

does your male from Palau have the long or short first dorsal fin as described by Taro?

I can think of the difference in the shapes of the dorsal fin of that level in the category of the individual gap. A boundary line of head scale may also be an individual gap.
That report is mentioned in 2004. The information on Stiphodon was lacking more than now then.
I have kept many S.percnopterygionus,too.
The change in their body color and pattern was also drastic, so individual's distinction was difficult at the beginning.
The shape of the first dorsal fin and the difference in the heads were effective in individual's distinction.

There seems to be a fear that a fixed impression is given to everyone for choosing and showing only a beautiful picture.
I made a picture tile of the various form of the same individual.

Stiphodon.sp "Raibow-color" which was being kept first. The form which is 2008 from 2003.

Stiphodon.sp "Raibow-color" , The individual the whole body was sometimes blackly

Stiphodon.sp "Raibow-color" , 2 males kept from last year. The individual an edge of the tail fin will be in blue.

Stiphodon.sp "Raibow-color" , 2 males kept from last year. The individual an edge of the tail fin will be in red.


Two males which were from Micronesia. One individual lived for nearly 4 years.
A picture of the upper left is their form at the natural habitat.

This individual was herding together at the same place, too, so it'll be of the same species.
At first, a male and female distinction were impossible for the young fish. After growth for 3 years, it was a gold body. When living a little more lengthily, maybe it changed to black and white body color.


ps,
The picture of "Rainbow-color" of Taro's site is stuck as Stream Goby in a document of these Guamanian creatures.
Does Taro know this fact?
http://www.wildlifeactionplans.org/pdfs ... n_plan.pdf
http://www17.tok2.com/home2/tarogoby/zu ... jiiro.html

[plaalye]

Great work odyssey!! Thank you !!!! I doubt we'll really ever be able to distictly classify these fish, but it sure is fun to study the differences and get as close as we can.[/img]

[Matt]

Fantastic work Odyssey! I agree with what you're saying about the 'old' methods of classification and that the naming of species of course fails to account for ongoing evolution! Someone suggested to me the other day that maybe in the future we will use only generic names labelled with collection locality and forget about specific names altogether which I thought was an interesting notion.

Yes the differences between S. julieni and S. elegans seem very small and their respective type localities are pretty close to one another too. Given how remote these are I doubt either has ever been seen in the aquarium trade though.

I still think these poorly-studied populations from Eastern Micronesia could be referred to as S. cf. pelewensis for now although maybe it'd be better to adopt some sort of numbering system?

[Brooklyn]

Beautiful species...

[odyssey]

Hi, Brooklyn.
A comment, thanks.

They're beautiful fish, but the dietary habit is a little stubborn.
Much Stiphodon doesn't try to eat food of anything but an alga easily.

S.percnopterygionus is an intense alga food principle.
10 years have passed since they were kept, but I have not seen them eating a blood worm and a flake hood.
When they're raised without the preparations which can supply a great deal of algae, there is a possibility that they starve to death.
The person who tries to raise them prepare a great deal of algae for them by all means, please.

A female of S.percnopterygionus is eating one kind of Cyanobacteria(Indigo　algae).


Female "Blue-moon" is eating Cyanobacteria which peeled.


The same individual's color change of S.pecnopterygionus.
The one which is a young cause or the first his dorsal fin doesn't develop yet.

[EdwardN]

Hi, I lately acquired a number of Gobies looking exactly like pictured here:
http://www17.tok2.com/home2/tarogoby/zu ... kaeru.html

Since I cannot read japanese, I'm at a loss what is this particular Goby's diet.

I would greatly appreciate if you could help me to determine, either from your experience, or from the japanes text , whether this is a predatory Goby, or algae eating one.

In my tank I have a multitude of Caridina type of shrimp and black worms ( bloodworms) and I wonder if this will be enough for the Gobies to sustain themselves provided they are a predatory sort.

Thank you for the help

Regards

Edward

[plaalye]

If yours are sicyopus sp. as in the link, they are predators, not algae grazers like stiphodon. i have three and mine won't take anything that's not wiggling or at least moving in the current. Won't take any sort of dried food. They take small gerden worms form my fingers. I don;t have shrimp with mine but I would guess they'd readily scarf up the young ones, and mine eat frozen bloodworms, brine & mysis shrimp if they are moving. They don't compete well with agressive feeders. These are my experiences, others may differ?

[EdwardN]

[quote="plaalye"]If yours are sicyopus sp. as in the link, they are predators, not algae grazers like stiphodon. i have three and mine won't take anything that's not wiggling or at least moving in the current. Won't take any sort of dried food. They take small gerden worms form my fingers. I don;t have shrimp with mine but I would guess they'd readily scarf up the young ones, and mine eat frozen bloodworms, brine & mysis shrimp if they are moving. They don't compete well with agressive feeders. These are my experiences, others may differ?[/quote]


Thanks a lot, plaalye!

I have six specimens and I hope that they do feed on small RCS-es and take some black worms, but I have not noticed any actual acts of depredation yet. I may start digging for some small earthworms, but I'm a bit apprehensive about introducing any bacteria and/or other harmful agents to my tank. I've already noticed they shyness and decided to remove nine Redtail Garras ( wish me luck in this), for they sometimes behave as a runaway train in my tank...

[odyssey]

Hi, EdwardN.

When the goby is Sicyopus genus, it's carnivorous as plaalye says.

My Sicyopus.sp liked and ate a bloodworm.
I have seen them rarely eating a small snail.

[odyssey]

A male and a female of Stiphodon genus sleep in the evening in the sand and under the stone.


A male makes a nest for female laying.
A male holds in its mouth and carries a small pellet.


A male presses the big pellet which isn't held in its mouth.

[EdwardN]

Thanks odyssey! I'm trying to feed them with black worms using a long and narrow plastic pipe, as I've seen on your pictures. Some react to this and ingest the worm immediately, and some are somehow shy at this point. I hope that in a little time all six of my Syciopus will learn and eat at will.

Regards

EdwardN

[Jacob1]

odyssey you are great .. thank you for the helpful material...

[odyssey]

Hi, everyone.

The color of the fin of Stiphodon isn't invariable.
Those sometimes discolor.
It's said that the edge of the dorsal fin of S.atroperpureus is red.

Their dorsal fin is red for certain, but it isn't always so.
All males of a lower picture are the same individual.
The edge of dorsal fin was red for certain at the beginning, but red hemming isn't seen recently.


Another example.
A lower picture is a change in the same female 3 years of S.percnopterygionus.
The dorsal fin was clear at the beginning. A red part appears in the fin soon, and it's spread gradually, and the whole has become last in red.
An individual with a red part sometimes also exists in a fin besides this individual in a female of S.percnopterygionus.