Paracheilinus alfiani is only a few days old as a newly minted species and already we have the world’s first videos of the new flasher wrasse. The video clip of Alfian’s flasher wrasse comes to us from Anna & Ned DeLoach of the Blenny Watcher Blog who were the first divers to see this new species in the wild.
The first documentation of the new flasher wrasse from Alor and the Banda Sea came from a post they shared in April of 2014, nearly two years ago. Thankfully it seems that their dive crew was well outfitted with photo and video cameras as the then unknown Paracheilinus alfiani was caught in this video of the new fish in its natural environment.
Like Flasher Beach in Triton Bay, it seems that the new Alfian’s flasher wrasse was discovered in a kind of flasher wrasse hot spot as you can see a huge number of Paracheilinus species all swimming and displaying in the same general location. The video shows not only the new Paracheilinus alfiani, but also some filamented flasher wrasse, and some specimens which look like clear hybrids of the two species.
In the first video of Paracheilinus alfiani you can clearly see nice supermales swimming energetically around the females, and occasionally flashing their nuptial display to impress them. As you can see in the action video, despite not having any dorsal filaments, Alfian’s flasher wrasse has a very tall dorsal fin when it is fully extended. This new Alfian’s flasher wrasse shares a lot in common in shape and coloration with Paracheilinus rennyae from nearby Flores, and it remains to be seen how closely related the two species are. [BlennyWatcher]
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