The new description of Trimma fasciatum, Trimma matsunoi and Gobiodon winterbottomi show that although the summer doldrums may be in full swing for the marine aquarium hobby, the ichthyologists are still busy classifying reef fishes.Especially with the nano reef gobies like Eviota and Trimma, these tiny substrate spawning reef fish have immense potential for regional speciation as with the case of the new Trimma fasciatum from Palau and Trimma matsunoi and Gobiodon winterbottomi both from Japan.
If you think these freshly preserved photographs of Trimma fasciatum and Trimma matsunoi look cool, check out the living color photographs of the newest goby species below.
Trimma fasciatum is a cute yellow goby with subtle shiny blue bands from Palau. It looks somewhat similar to the popular Trimma cana candy cane nano goby except that it has a much slimmer head profile, and brilliant blue eyes (which became red in preserving liquid). Trimma fasciatum is known to occur from Ryukyu Islands in Japan to the Saipan Islands in the Marianas but the majority of the description material were collected from Palau.
Trimma matsunoi comes to us from Japan, more specifically in Kashiwa-jima of the Kouchi Prefecture in Japan. This deeper bodied species has a base color of rosy brown with a deep orange margin to every scale and a pattern of light iridescent blue spots. Even if we could get fish from Japan, the specimens of Trimma matsunoi were all collected from deeper water, with both the live specimens in the pictures being spotted at a depth of 175 feet or more!
