Liopropoma incandescens is a smoking hot new species of basslet from one of our absolute favorited groups of marine fish, the Liopropoma. Like so many of its congeners this new species of Liopropoma wasnot just swimming around on some shallow reefs waiting for normal divers to discover it.
In a story that is becoming quite familiar, deep diving specialists Brian Greene, Luiz Rocha & Co dove to bone crushing depths of over 400 feet to collect just one lonely specimen as the holotype for this new species. We’d say the dive was worth it because the gorgeous new incandescent basslet is glistening with beautiful colors.
Liopropoma incandescens has a salmon pink body, yellow accents in the unpaired fins and a degree of lightly defined yellow markings on the face and top of the body. This color scheme together with the small black tail spots edged in blue is highly reminiscent of the Caribbean cave basslet, Liopropoma mowbrayi, its Atlantic twin.
The single holotype collected has a modest length of just 54 mm or about two inches but another large individual approximately 10cm/4 inches long was also observed in the vicinity, so we can expect to see larger examples of this species. That’s a big IF because the likelihood of deep diving collection of ornamental fish in this part of the world is incredibly unlikely, but in the meantime we look forward to at least seeing what this fish looks like at an adult size. [ZooKeys]
