New Fish Species Described in the Past Decade: Regional and Taxonomic Hotbeds, and Prolific Authors

Background research for the forthcoming revision of Joe Nelson’s “Fishes of the World” has allowed us to identify prolific authors of new species, geographic regions of greatest discovery and description, and taxonomic groups with large numbers of new taxa. Many more than 2000 species have been named in the past ten years. Among fossil fishes, the majority of new species have been sharks; new species of fossil bony fishes have been mostly holosteans and teleosts from the regional hotbeds of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. For extant fishes, there has been a very rapid rate of publication of new fish names for some groups, particularly certain sharks and many teleost families inhabiting fresh waters of South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. These descriptions are often the work of relatively few but prolific investigators. Groups with greatest numbers of new species include scyliorhinid sharks as well as characids, cyprinids, several catfish families, gobies, rivulids, and cichlids. Clearly there is much work remaining to do to achieve a good understanding of the alpha diversity of fishes.