Star polyps, green star polyps, brown star polyps, whatever you call them, are one group of corals that we don’t appreciate nearly enough. Nine out of ten reefers couldn’t tell you the scientific name of this important aquarium coral, or…
New Species
Australophyllia is the new home of ‘Symphyllia’ wilsoni
Australophyllia wilsoni is the new name for what we currently call Symphyllia wilsoni. We’ve always known that there was something special about Australophyllia wilsoni, from it smorphology, polyp appearance on from where in the world it comes from. Compared to…
Chrysiptera papuensis, C. ellenae & C. maurineae – three new damselfish from East Indies
We’ve already posted our Top 15 New Reef Fish Species of 2015 but we should have held out for one more week. Prolific fish namers Gerald Allen and Marc Erdmann have gone an published one more paper this year, this…
Lutjanus xanthopinnis, a new snapper species described from the Indo-Pacific
Lutjanus xanthopinnis is a new species of snapper that has just been described and joins a large complex of snappers with a pattern of yellow lines. Generally speaking, the yellow finned snapper looks more like something you might eat than keep…
Navigobius vittatus from Brunei is the newest species of Dartfish
Navigobius vittatus is a new species of deepwater dartfish that has just been described from specimens collected around Borneo. Navigobius dewa kicked off this exciting genus of dartfish several years ago and since then, several more undescribed species of these…
The cutest new species of slippery goby, Lubricogobius nanus
It’s been a hot minute since we saw some new species of reef fish being described and so this next new species from Papua New Guinea is here to make sure we don’t go without. Lubricogobius nanus is a small species…
Two new species of azoox zoanthids, Palythoa mizigama & P. umbrosa
Two new species of zoanthids, Palythoa mizigama & Palythoa umbrosa were described earlier this year but we’re just now getting a good look at the appearance of these novel zoanthids. What makes the two new Palythoa species really interesting is not…
There’s probably more than one species of blue ridge coral, Heliopora
Blue ridge coral, Heliopora coerulea, is a unique species of coral in the wild and in the aquarium.Despite being extremely widespread and common on wild reefs, for some reason blue ridge coral is pretty rare in aquariums, even though it is a…
Plectranthias bennetti, a new species of anthiine from the Coral Sea
The anthiine genus Plectranthias contains over fifty species of small to medium sized benthic, reef dwelling species. With the exception of P. garrupellus in the Western Atlantic, the genus is restricted to the Indo-Pacific region. Most species are small, highly secretive, and…
The top 6 new species of marine life this month
There have been a lot of new species descriptions in the last handful of weeks, and there are lots that can be said about each of them. We’ve covered them all individually but we wanted to bring your attention to…