Chasmodes saburrae Jordan & Gilbert 1882

Chasmodes saburrae Florida Blenny

Chasmodes saburrae Jordan and Gilbert 1882: 298. Type locality: Pensacola, Florida. Lectotype: USNM 30824, designated by Jordan and Evermann (1898: 2393).

Blennius fabbri Nichols 1910: 161. Type locality: Miami, Florida. Holotype: AMNH 2537.

Material examined. One hundred fifty-two specimens examined, 12.8–71.5 mm SL. Florida: CAS-SU 440 (paralectotypes, 12, 39.6–72.6 mm SL, Pensacola, Florida), UF 118293 (1, 35.3 mm SL), UF 118300 (5, 26.3– 47.4 mm SL), UF 23686 (5, 33.0– 45.1 mm SL), UMMZ 139366 (5, 16.3–55.6 mm SL), UF 23688 (21, 12.8– 30.1 mm SL), AMNH 17245 (1, 23.4 mm SL), UF 208183 (1, 52.7 mm SL), UF 203132 (3, 23.9–33.8 mm SL), UF 210739 (1, 30.0 mm SL), UF 65583 (1, 40.0 mm SL), ANSP 78555 (1, 41.0 mm SL), ANSP 131944 (1), UF 32656 (1, 15.3 mm SL), TU 21035 (1, 40.2 mm SL), UF 54108 (10, 20.4–36.9 mm SL), ANSP 74119 (1, 69.7 mm SL), UMMZ 113268 (1, 44.4 mm SL), USNM 084040 (1, 50.6 mm SL), ANSP 86332 (13), UF 2576 (1, 26.2 mm SL), UF 1084 (1, 51.0 mm SL), TU 21869 (5, 29.8–65.4 mm SL), UF 54179 (1, 57.9 mm SL), TU 16713 (1, 56.2 mm SL), UF 75127 (1, 53.9 mm SL), UF 51529 (1, 49.9 mm SL), UF 64651 (9, 18.6– 40.8 mm SL). Mississippi: GCRL 5777 (3, 28.4–39.1 mm SL), GCRL 5781 (4, 10.4–23.2 mm SL), FMNH 46657 (1, 38.6 mm SL), USNM 188248 (18, 28.6–71.5 mm SL). Louisiana: TU 76601 (10, 35.6–50.3 mm SL), TU 78298 (3, 38.3–42.6 mm SL), TU 188444 (2, 41.7–62.3 mm SL), CAS-SU 21380 (5, 45.8–56.9 mm SL).

Diagnosis. Characters, in combination, which serve to distinguish C. saburrae: dentary teeth bluntly pointed (see Williams 1983: fig. 2); mandibular pores 5–8 (usually 6); ventral lip flaps prominent; upper jaw length 28.0–43.3% of head length; gill rakers 12–14 (usually 13).

Description. Characters presented in generic and species diagnoses and generic description form a part of the species description and are not repeated. Snout somewhat steep in lateral profile. Body proportions are given in Table 3.

Size. The maximum standard length of C. saburrae is about 80 mm SL (Williams 1983).

Distribution. This species is distributed along the coast from Edgewater, east coast of Florida, westward to the Chandeleur Islands, Louisiana. Between Pensacola, Florida, and the Chandeleur Islands, C. saburrae is sympatric with C. longimaxilla, but the former occupies seagrass beds “almost exclusively” rather than shells that it sometimes inhabits and that the latter prefers (Williams 1983). In other parts of Florida, this species has been collected from lagoon reefs (Gilmore 1974), seagrass beds, and in oyster or conch shells.

Ecology and life history. Reid (1954) gave a qualitative account of the stomach contents of 30 specimens. Carr and Adams (1973) verified these findings and showed that juveniles eat mostly amphipods and later become omnivorous. The reproductive biology and developmental osteology of this species have been characterized by Peters (1981). Tavolga (1958) described courtship sounds made by male C. bosquianus taken from Gasparilla Sound (west coast of Florida). The identification of those individuals may have been in error, because there is no other documentation of C. bosquianus from that part of Florida. It is therefore more likely that those specimens were C. saburrae.

Molecular phylogeny. DNA sequences, including two acquired from GenBank, were aligned to produce a data matrix with 24 specimens (representing ten species) and 407 characters. Of those, 79 were parsimonyinformative and 328 were parsimony-uninformative and therefore excluded from further consideration. Sequences that were collected for this study have been deposited in GenBank (Table 1). A single most parsimonious tree was found to have a length of 179 steps, a consistency index (CI) of 0.65, and a retention index (RI) of 0.85 (Fig. 3). Parablennius parvicornis was the most basal species of the ingroup. The tree also showed Chasmodes as the sister group to a clade consisting of Hypleurochilus, Scartella, and Hypsoblennius. Within the Chasmodes clade, C. bosquianus and C. saburrae did not form reciprocally monophyletic groups. At least 97% of the 1000 bootstrap pseudoreplicates sampled with a heuristic search (tree bisectionreconnection algorithm of branch-swapping) supported nodes that joined pairs of congeners, but intergeneric relationships were supported by bootstrap frequences of less than 50%. Bremer support values also exhibited a wide range, with some nodes only supported by a value of one, whereas the highest Bremer support value (14) was found at the node representing the most recent common ancestor of Chasmodes specimens (Fig. 3).