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The Andaman Sea population is squamipinnis
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/69711935
The Cocos-Keeling & Christmas Islands populations could be either, and the current observations only show non-male specimens.
It would be ideal if we could make a species complex for this group (plus P. huchtii & olivaceus)). That might help solve the atlasing issue. These will likely get split off into their own genus, Franzia, but I don't know when that'll actually happen.
Should it also be P. nobilis for Taiwan and Hong Kong?
For Polynesia, I don't see any obs from there, unless you count Tonga and Fiji, but these are supposed to be within the range of P. cheirospilos.
As for the species complex, I'm up for it, but shouldn't nobilis be in there as well? (I thought it used to be conspecific with P. squamipinnis
correct, nobilis is the northern member of this group, whereas huchtii & olivaceus form a sister clade. they're all very similar and frequently misidentified, so implementing a complex would be a large improvement.
I would consider everything north of the Philippines to be P. nobilis. That species does reach the northern coast of Luzon, but there don't seem to be any observations of it there.
I'm currently working on this group of species. @joe_fish has the essence of it correct. I have argued for Franzia as a distinct genus (for the squamipinnis complext, huchtii complex and olivaceus), but I think it's fine to continue with Pseudanthias for now. At this stage it's difficult to identify females and juveniles to either squamipinnis or cheirospilos, so Cocos-Keeling and Christmas Island populations remain unresolved until someone photographs a male from there. (Allen and Steene have a photo of a male squamippinis in their Christmas Island book, but I haven't checked them to see whether it was actually photographed there.) My big paper on Pseudanthias and related genera is still about a year out from being completed, but it will include a bunch of changes in species names, not just in this complex. It would be preferable to hold off on making too many changes until that work is completed.
@anthonygill Thanks a lot for your insight! I guess, @joe_fish gave the right call to make a "species complex" until the taxonomic situation is clarified then! This minimized disturbance for the ID's that were outside of the atlases. (although the vast majority was automatically attributed to either cheirospilos or squamipinnis)
@maractwin @uconnbirdfish @francoislibert @joe_fish @anthonygill
Would you mind having a look at the atlases?
I tried to follow the distributions provided by CoF, but I'm still not sure what to do with observations from Andaman Sea, Cocos and Christmas Islands.
Also, as usual with marine animals, quite a few observations would fall outside atlases and end up back to genus level. e.g., those from the Great Barrier Reef.
What do you think?