The newly-discovered species of gobiid fish, Tomiyamichthys elliotensis (common name is the Lady Elliot shrimp goby), is currently known only from Lady Elliot Island at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef, although it is likely to be present throughout the Capricorn-Bunker Reefs and potentially could be widespread throughout the Great Barrier Reef.
Tomiyamichthys elliotensis, underwater photograph, approx. 5 cm in length, Lady Elliot Island, Queensland, Australia. Image credit: M.V. Erdmann.
Tomiyamichthys is a genus of Indo-Pacific gobiid fishes that inhabit sand-rubble bottoms in the vicinity of coral reefs.
Known as shrimpgobies, they often live in the same burrow as alpheid snapping shrimps, with the fish acting as lookout to warn the shrimp of predators. In return the shrimp builds and maintains the burrow.
The newly-discovered species, Tomiyamichthys elliotensis, is the 19th member of the genus.
The fish is currently known only from Lady Elliot Island, located within the Capricorn Bunker Group and one of the southernmost reefs of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
“This is a significant, exciting discovery,” said University of the Sunshine Coast marine biologist Chris Dudgeon, one of the researchers working on the collaborative Leaf to Reef project, part of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation’s Reef Islands Initiative.
Small and white, with brown spots, yellow-orange bands and a large sail-like first dorsal fin, Tomiyamichthys elliotensis was first sighted in a sand burrow that it shares with a pair of alpheid snapping shrimps.
“It’s been a while since a ‘never recorded anywhere before’ fish has been described from the Great Barrier Reef,” Dr. Dudgeon said.
“While the Great Barrier Reef is a much-studied ecosystem, the last completely new species to be described was a grouper found in the deep sea in 2019, which is where most new discoveries come from.”
“To find a new fish species in the shallows on a reef, in plain sight is unique.”
“Most of the potentially new species uncovered at Lady Elliot Island were gobies — frequently overlooked by divers and marine scientists due to their small size and cryptic behaviors,” said Dr. Mark Erdmann, a fish taxonomist with Conservation International Aotearoa and the California Academy of Sciences.
“Nonetheless, a close look at these fishes reveals a subtle beauty in their color patterns which often rivals that of their more conspicuous cousins on the reef like butterflyfishes or parrotfishes.”
“I’m delighted that the biodiversity research being conducted as part of the Leaf to Reef project is highlighting these ‘cryptobenthic’ species like the gobies, which besides comprising a significant proportion of the reef fish biodiversity on the Great Barrier Reef, are also vitally important as a significant source of food to larger reef fishes including wrasses, groupers and emperors.”
“The Lady Elliot Island collections contain several potential new species that are morphologically very similar to species from surrounding geographic regions,” said Dr. Gerry Allen, an ichthyologist at the Western Australian Museum.
“This includes several tiny gobies belonging to the genus Eviota and at least one of these appears to be undescribed.”
The discovery of Tomiyamichthys elliotensis is reported in a paper published in the Journal of the Ocean Science Foundation.
_____
G.R. Allen et al. 2023. Tomiyamichthys elliotensis, a new species of shrimpgoby (Teleostei: Gobiidae) from Lady Elliot Island, Queensland, Australia. Journal of the Ocean Science Foundation 40: 57-69; doi: 10.5281/zenodo.8404548
