Black hamlet?

[itziar]

I need help with a hamlet ID -- sorry I do not have a photograph.
I have seen several of these in the Veracruz Reefs, Mexico: solid black body, long pelvic fins with a rim of dark blue, with blue markings (lines and spots) on the snout. Is this a black hamlet? I have looked for photographs in the web, and I have not found any with blue markings in the snout. The Humann&De Loach guide describes them as solid dark color, but the photograph they show has a hamlet with a blue rim in the pelvic fin.... any ideas? What else can it be?

-- Itziar

 

[H2Andy]

hamlets are relatively young (evolutionary speaking) and so their break down into species has been exceedingly troublesome to pin down.

one result of this is that they drive divers mad when trying to i.d. them. there's lots of intra-species variation, so the best you will get, except from a dedicated taxonomist who specializes in the field, is a "close enough."

here's a related article; the first paragraph touches on
the beweildering variation of hamlet color patterns:

http://www.fishid.com/learnctr/hamlet.htm

so i would call it a black hamlet if it's close enough to the pics you have, some small details nonwithstanding.

would be nice to have a pic of it as well. here's one i found:

http://images.google.com/imgres?img...let&start=20&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sa=N

did it look like that, more or less?

 

[archman]

Great article Andy! I've been wondering what the state of research into their genetics was... sounds like it's time for some new electrophoretic work.

 

[H2Andy]

thanks!!

hey, you never took my turtle challenge

 

[archman]

hey, you never took my turtle challenge

Where's the link to it?

 

[itziar]

Thanks for the link Andy, no wonder why I was so confused!

http://images.google.com/imgres?img...let&start=20&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sa=N

did it look like that, more or less?

Yes it did, except for the blue markings on the snout, which seemed very obvious to me, but are not apparent in any of the photographs I have found in the web. The blue markings were similar to those in butter or barred hamlets, in a dark blue color, but the whole body and face were black.

I do not have a camera yet, but I am surely missing one!