The Puffer Forum

How do you get a GSP ready for a full marine tank? they are so cute and i would love to have one in mine!

Corvus - among your seemingly endless knowledge you seem to know Canthigaster pretty well. I have (2) currently - my girlfriend loves them too and we typically purchase them as they come along (usually as rescue puffs as we have come to call them I am looking to get a few more - primarily to help ascertain the differences and scientific reasoning behind the naming conventions - it seems to me that Canthigasters in general rather than being divided into so many species may truly be color morphs and variations based on location - good example is the White Stripe vs Gold Stripe Maroon clown - Gold band maroons tend to hail from Sumatra while White Bands have a broader ranger...What do you think of this very early hypothesis on the Canthigasters? Really just posing for general conversation on this Genus - guess could move to its own thread...

Describing the different Canthigasters as color morphs was actually state of the art a few years ago. The point is if they are shown to be limited to specific areas, while other morphs occur in other areas, or - even better - if there is a morphological gap (meaning little or no transition of a typical character) they can be justified as a seperate species. A lot of new toby species have been described in the last years that have been seen as other species prior to that.

Case solandri/papua: C. papua was long time believed to be a synonym of C. solandri. Next step was people (would have to look up the scientists' names) recognized that the population from Indonesia, New Guinea, Philippines, Australia, and Belau differs in coloration. They compared them to the holotypes and first descriptions of solandri and its synonyms to see if this might be a new species and saw they were identical to C. papua. So, C. papua is a valid species again differentiated from C. solandri by the criteria given in posts above. The are a few more similar species occuring in other areas, e.g. C. margaritata in the Red Sea.

I guess it is also up to how you define what a species is. Usually it is defined as "a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring". Many taxonomists consider populations like those Canthigasters are "not capable of interbreeding" because they live in different areas and rarely meet. Others might see them as subspecies, because when you put them together in captivity or a small area where they occur together they MIGHT sometimes produce fertile offspring.

Two problems: we humans want to make clear classifications where nature shows transitions, and as biologists we also consider only the time now. On a geological time scale separated populations will develop into different species given the possibility without a doubt.

Corvus wrote:Two problems: we humans want to make clear classifications where nature shows transitions, and as biologists we also consider only the time now. On a geological time scale separated populations will develop into different species given the possibility without a doubt.

Without a doubt - thats very true in general. I have always done my best as a scientist to "see the big picture" if you will. Obviously it is not possible to forward or backwards but it is sometimes possible to determine how species spread. Given that Canthigaster is not readily bred in captivity, the interbreeding/sterility rule of thumb is difficult to go by as I am sure you know.

Seems to me that the Canthigaster show so many color morphs, can survive a rather long time without food (would allow them to be carried to different areas more often than some animals) seem to indicate that in my humble opinion, they are probably simply very small deviations from a "main" species - again just my guessing...just so much in common its hard not to think sub-species

If they were able to usually survive long enough and be carried to other areas that often, the described species would not have their established distributions. The few ones possibly drifting away seemingly have little to no influence on other populations or we would see much more of them.

As written above, the point is there seems to be no to little transition between them, and also in part geographic isolation. These two arguments can justify the establishement of species. Review the literature on the genus... again there are tons of papers... Start with an older one with lots of references to prior works: Allen, G.R. & J.E. Randall. 1977. Review of the Sharpnose Pufferfishes (Subfamily Canthigasterinae) of the Indo-Pacific. Records of the Australian Museum. 30(17): 475-517, and a newer one Moura, R.L. and R.M.C. Castro, 2002. Revision of Atlantic sharpnose pufferfishes (Tetraodontiformes: Tetraodontidae: Canthigaster), with description of three new species. Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash. 115(1):32-50.

You can try to re-introduce the old Canthigaster classification, but I doubt it will be accepted by other taxonomists without lots of proof, and incorporating the type material.

I think this is much different compared to the color morphs of Arothron nigropunctatus or other Arothron that are in general not limited to specific areas and show many transitions between each other.

There are other puffers that are far more unclear with regard to if they are separate species or not like M. turgidus, cochinchinensis; T. lineatus, T. pustulatus.