Anthias are some of the most beautiful and graceful small reef fish in the ocean, and today we get treated to an unfamiliar species. First described in the 1850s, Anthias asperlinguis has the hallmark pink coloration of an Anthias but we didn’t really know that since there were no photographs to be made of fish 150 years ago.
Thankfully, a recent expedition to St. Paul’s rock managed to collect some samples of Anthias asperlinguis as well as the first pictures of this species in the wild. Equipped with this new information, atlantic and caribbean fish taxonomists redescribed this little known species and sorted out some similar looking fish.
The most exciting detail to come from the redescription of Anthias asperlinguis is the reclassification of Odontanthias hensleyi – we thought this was the first species of Odontanthias from the Caribbean but it turns out this is simply a deep bodied species of Anthias, and quite similar looking to the freshly redescribed A. asperlinguis.
