Species name of GSP

[Blinkey]

Hi all,
I know that many refer to GSP as Tetraodon nigroviridis, however, I have also come across resources which refer to it by Dichotomyctere nigroviridis such as in "Kottelat, M. 2013. The Fishes of the Inland Waters of Southeast Asia: A Catalogue and Core Bibliography of the Fishes Known to Occur in Freshwaters, Mangroves and Estuaries. The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology, Supplement No. 27: 1–663". I am unsure as to which is the correctly used species name.
Has the name been recently changed or is it a case of misidentification?

Cheers

[Corvus]

Dichotomyctere is the correct and changed genus name (to be more exact it's a very old genus name) for many Asian brackish water puffers. The species names such as nigroviridis remain unchanged. So, Dichotomyctere nigroviridis is the name.

[Blinkey]

Thanks for that Corvus. It's good to know the correct name

[nmonks]

A few thoughts to this, solicited by Pufferpunk earlier today...

Dichotomyctere is the correct and changed genus name...

It's the current name anyway, and only "correct" if other authors in the field take it up and use it.

Repeat after me: "The genus name is an artificial construct that has no biological meaning whatsoever". The only thing that has any sort of biological meaning is the species. How you define a species is a matter of debate, but the old idea of a population of organisms that breed amongst themselves is a good starting point. Once you get to genus, let alone family, order, etc., it's all about scientists finding ways to "stock take" diversity and determine the patterns left behind by evolution.

The need for defining new genera comes about from studies of phylogeny. Presumably Tetraodon has been determined to be polyphyletic or paraphyletic, meaning that all the species formerly considered Tetraodon are not a "clade" -- a word that's difficult to explain to anyone not well versed in taxonomy. But the Wikipedia explanation is a start: a group of organisms that consists of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants, and represents a single "branch" on the "tree of life". So if one or more species normally called Tetraodon seem to have come from a different evolutionary branch of the tree of life, Tetraodon has to be redefined, and new genera coined for the new branches of the tree of life so determined. I'm guessing that's what's going on here with Dichotomyctere.

As should be obvious, this only matters if you're doing primary taxonomy (i.e., discovering and naming species) or determining phylogeny (i.e., figuring out the tree of life). It couldn't matter less to fishkeepers. A bit like Pseudotropheus and Cichlasoma, you're 100% free to use Tetraodon if you want to, especially while the fish scientists are still trying to resolve the tree of life in all its details. As it is, the tree keeps changing shape every time someone diddles about with the data set or throws in a new species.

What always matters is the species name. Tetraodon nigroviridis is a rock-solid name, and everyone knows what it is. It might not be the newest name for this species, but that's irrelevant. The fundamental unit of taxonomy (and biology) is the species, and so long as everyone knows what species you're talking about, arguments over the genus are interesting but not particularly important.

Cheers, Neale

[Blinkey]

Thanks for that insight Neale. I do remember learning teleost fish taxonomy in my undergrad. years and its nature of being in a near constant state of change. Very interesting though when learning about what distinct features separates one taxonomic group from another. It certainly is a true demonstration of how science is constantly changing with new found discoveries.