Elops smithi McBride, Rocha, Ruiz-Carus and Bowen 2010

Smith-Vaniz, William F. & Jelks, Howard L., 2014, Marine and inland fishes of St. Croix, U. S. Virgin Islands: an annotated checklist, Zootaxa 3803 (1), pp. 1-120 : 21-22

Elops smithi McBride, Rocha, Ruiz-Carus and Bowen 2010 — Southern Ladyfish

Listed as Elops saurus Linnaeus by Fowler (1951:25) and as "common" by Clavijo et al. (1980:5).

Justification: ANSP 73294 (2) and ANSP 80628 (2), all ANSP specimens based on leptocephali; ZMUC P.17906 (1, 273 mm SL), St. Croix, Jan. 1842.

Distribution: McBride and Horodysky (2004) and McBride et al. (2010) WA (BD*, BA, GA, VI, LA, WC, nSA, sSA).

Remarks: Only one species of ladyfish, Elops saurus Linnaeus , was thought to occur in the western Atlantic Ocean until Smith (1989e) showed that leptocephali from the area had a bimodal distribution of myomere counts, indicating the existence of two distinct morphs. He identified the low-count morph (68–72 preanal and 74–78 total myomeres) as Elops sp. and the high-count morph (76–80 preanal and 79–86 total myomeres) as E. saurus . Although both species are virtually identical externally, they differ in number of vertebrae and, except in areas of sympatry, in counts of lateral-line scales (102–118 in E. smithi versus 119–128 in E. saurus ), have distinct mitochondrial DNA sequences and mostly allopatric distributions ( McBride et al., 2010). Elops smithi is distributed throughout the Bahamas, Caribbean Sea and northern coast of South America, whereas E. saurus has a more northern distribution occurring in the Gulf of Mexico and off the east coast of the United States.

MEGALOPIDAE —tarpons (1 species)