Revised 24 June 2023
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Bonefishes
Subfamily ALBULINAE Bleeker 1849
Albula Scopoli 1777 Latin for whitish, perhaps referring to silvery appearance of A. vulpes
Albula argentea (Forster 1801) Latin for silvery, referring to fine silvery body (“Corpus teres, argenteum”) and/or smooth silvery (“glabra argentea”) opercula
Albula esuncula (Garman 1899) referring to the close resemblance of larval specimens to Esunculus costai Kaup 1856 (= larval A. vulpes): –unculus (L.), a diminutive suffix, referring, as Kaup explained, to the “miniature likeness of its members” to Esox (pikes)
Albula gilberti Pfeiler & van der Heiden 2011 in honor of “pioneer” American ichthyologist Charles Henry Gilbert (1859–1928), who first recorded the metamorphosis of bonefish leptocephali (1889) and likely collected what is now recognized as this species
Albula glossodonta (Forsskål 1775) glṓssa (Gr. γλῶσσα), tongue; odonta, Neo-Latin scientific adjective derived from odoús (Gr. ὀδούς), tooth, referring to broad patches of coarse and blunt teeth on tongue
Albula goreensis Valenciennes 1846 –ensis, Latin suffix denoting place: Gorée, Senegal, type locality
Albula koreana Kwun & Kim 2011 –ana (L.), belonging to: southeast coast of Korea, type locality
Albula nemoptera (Fowler 1911) thread-finned, from nḗma (Gr. νῆμα), thread, and ptera, from pterón (Gr. πτερόν) or ptéryx (πτέρυξ), fin, referring to filamentous rays at ends of dorsal and anal fins
Albula oligolepis Hidaka, Iwatsuki & Randall 2008 olígos (Gr. ὀλίγος), few or scanty; lepίs (Gr. λεπίς), scale; authors say that name refers referring to its “small scales,” but description singles out fewer pored lateral-line scales as key difference compared to other members of A. argentea complex
Albula pacifica (Beebe 1942) –ica (L.), belonging to: referring to its distribution in the eastern Pacific
Albula virgata Jordan & Jordan 1922 Latin for striped or made of twigs, referring to dark stripes extending lengthwise on the body mainly between the rows of scales
Albula vulpes (Linnaeus 1758) Latin for fox, allusion not explained, possibly referring to its speed (some anglers call them the sprinters of the fish world)
Longfin or Deepwater Bonefishes
Subfamily PTEROTHRISSINAE Gill 1893
Nemoossis Hidaka, Tsukamoto & Iwatsuki 2016 nemo (L.), no man, no one or nobody, but authors say it means “absence”; ossis (L.), bone, referring to absence of supraneural bones
Nemoossis belloci (Cadenat 1937) in honor of Gérard Belloc, Directeur du Laboratoire de l’Office Scientifique et Technique des Pèches Maritimes à La Rochelle, head of the research cruise during which holotype was captured
Pterothrissus Hilgendorf 1877 ptero, from pterón (Gr. πτερόν), fin, referring to long dorsal fin; thrissus, from thríssa (Gr. θρίσσα), a kind of anchovy, possibly derived from thrix (Gr. θρίξ), hair, referring to hair-like bones, often used as a standard suffix for clupeids (genus originally placed in herring family Clupeidae)
Pterothrissus gissu Hilgendorf 1877 from gisu, Japanese vernacular for this species