N33 2013 Northeastern Naturalist Notes Vol. 20, No. 4 J.C. Tyler, B.B. Collette, and E.A. Broughton Northern Range Extension to Georges Bank for Hollardia hollardi (Reticulate Spikefish) (Triacanthodidae, Tetraodontiformes) James C. Tyler1,*, Bruce B. Collette2, and Elisabeth A. Broughton3 Abstract - Hollardia hollardi (Reticulate Spikefish) is reported from two specimens caught in lobster traps along the southern edge of Georges Bank, far north of its previously known northern distribution from southern Florida, the Bahamas, and Bermuda. Hollardia hollardi Poey (Reticulate Spikefish) has an extensively documented distribution in the Bahamas, Bermuda, the Florida Keys, throughout the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, along the northern coast of South America, and south to the middle coastal regions of Brazil (Lopes et al. 2009, Matsuura 2002, McEachran and Fechhelm 2005, Robins and Ray 1986, Tyler 1968). In February 2012, lobster fisherman Ernie Milward, captain of the F/V Miss Julie, was working along the southern edge of Georges Bank, southeast of Massachusetts, when he caught a type of fish that he had never seen before in one of his traps. He took a color photograph of the fish before discarding it and then sent the photograph to James Manning, a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Laboratory of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, for identification. Manning referred the matter to one of us (E.A. Broughton) at the same lab, who recognized the photograph as being that of a northern record specimen of H. hollardi. To confirm the identification, she sent the photograph to her colleagues at the Smithsonian Institution, but we deferred action, hoping that another specimen from Georges Bank would eventually be caught to validate the northern record, and we encouraged our fishermen and fisheries colleagues to examine their catches for the presence of this fish. On 8 January 2013, Mr. Milward caught another specimen of H. hollardi in about the same area and placed it on ice. Through the good offices of Manning, the specimen was sent, still on ice, to the Smithsonian, and a tissue sample and photographs of the still fully colored specimen were taken before it was preserved. The specimen was caught at 40°10.92'N, 68°20.95'W, on the slope of Heel Tapper Canyon (about 16 km northwest of the better known Oceanographer Canyon) at a depth of 269 m, surface temperature 10.6 oC. Although we refer to the location as southeast of Massachusetts, the latitude of capture is actually on the level of the northern coastal region of New Jersey; the location is 185 km southeast of Nantucket and 479 km due east of New Jersey. The specimen that was photographed by Capt. Milward, but not saved in February 2012, was taken within 1.6 km of this location at a depth of 329–366 m and was estimated to be about 125 mm standard length (SL). The collected specimen (USNM 41066) is 102 mm SL and, when fresh (Fig. 1), had a rosy red reticulate pattern with tannish interspaces, and the rosy red bands predominated in the overall reddish appearance. After preservation (Fig. 2), the reddish reticulate bands turned dark brown and were less prominent, whereas the tan interspaces became paler but were more apparent. The gonads of the specimen were not sufficiently developed for gross determination of sex. 1Division of Fishes, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, MRC-159, PO Box 37012, Washington, DC 20013-7012. 2National Marine Fisheries Service Systematics Laboratory, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, MRC-153, PO Box 37012, Washington, DC 20013-7012. 3Northeast Fisheries Science Center, Woods Hole Laboratory, 166 Water Street, Woods Hole, MA 02543. *Corresponding author - tylerj@si.edu. Notes of the Northeastern Naturalist, Issue 20/4, 2013 2013 Northeastern Naturalist Notes Vol. 20, No. 4 N34 J.C. Tyler, B.B. Collette, and E.A. Broughton The specimen has entirely typical diagnostic meristic and morphometric features for H. hollardi (see Tyler 1968), as follows: dorsal VI, 17; anal 15; pectoral 14–14 (the preceding all modal for the species); dark blackish peritoneum; origin of spiny dorsal fin Figure 1. Color pattern of fresh specimen of Hollardia hollardi (Reticulate Spikefish), USNM 41066, 102 mm SL. Photograph by Sandra Raredon. Figure 2. Color pattern after preservation of Hollardia hollardi (Reticulate Spikefish), USNM 41066, 102 mm SL. Photograph by Sandra Raredon. N35 2013 Northeastern Naturalist Notes Vol. 20, No. 4 J.C. Tyler, B.B. Collette, and E.A. Broughton well behind level of upper edge of gill opening and of upper edge of pectoral-fin base; pelvis relatively wide, its width between the pelvic spines about four times its length, the bases of the pelvic spines well separated from each other when not erect; snout relatively short, 3.1 times in head; distance between tip of snout and spiny dorsal-fin origin 1.7 times in SL; postorbital distance (rear of orbit to upper end of gill slit) relatively long, 2.8 times in head; gill opening relatively large, reaching ventrally to about one-half down pectoral-fin base. A radiograph (Fig. 3) shows characters typical for this species: e.g., 8 abdominal + 12 caudal vertebrae, 2nd and 4th interneural spaces vacant, and an especially obliquely inclined shaft of the first spiny dorsal-fin basal pterygiophore. While discussing this new northern record with other ichthyologists, we learned from Karsten Hartel, Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ), Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, of a 121 mm SL specimen (MCZ 169367) of H. hollardi that had been collected in 2009 by John Galbraith aboard the R/V Henry Bigelow 169 km due east of the mouth of Delaware Bay, 38°43.4'N, 73°02.6'W, at a depth of 262 m. The photograph of the specimen in the MCZ data base shows a typical reticulate specimen whose identity is not in doubt. This is additional evidence of the northern occurrence of this species off the northeast coast of the United States. We refrain from speculating about the causes of these recent northern records of this species, although they appear to represent stra ys. Our search of web sites with fish-collection databases (especially fishnet2.net) indicated that the vast majority of specimens of H. hollardi have been taken between about 100–900 m depth; however, it has been taken in water as shallow as 18 m (FMNH 74282) during a shallow-water cruise (Cruise 49, 17–28 June 1963, comprising stations ranging from 7 to 110 m depth, with one specimen of H. hollardi taken at station 5043 at a depth of 18 m; station number on tab in jar with the specimen) of the R/V Silver Bay off Mississippi (identification confirmed by a photograph of the specimen from Susan Mochel, Field Mu- Figure 3. Radiograph of Hollardia hollardi (Reticulate Spikefish), USNM 41066, 102 mm SL. Radiograph by Sandra Raredon. 2013 Northeastern Naturalist Notes Vol. 20, No. 4 N36 J.C. Tyler, B.B. Collette, and E.A. Broughton seum of Natural History, Chicago, IL). By contrast, it has been taken as deep as 1680 m for one of the two specimens that represent the southern-most locality record of the species (Lopes et al. 2009), off the middle coastal region of Brazil, east of Vitoria, Espirato Santo state (20°27.667'S, 39°38.101'W). The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (www.gbif.org) web site lists a supposed fossil specimen of H. hollardi from Morocco. The record is from the paleobiology database (record 285105) of the Marine Science Institute, University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB). This record would be extraordinary because if this were a specimen of an extant fish, it would be the first eastern Atlantic record for the species, whereas if it indeed was a fossil specimen it could well be some triacanthodid taxon related to Prohollardia Tyler, Jerzmanska, Bannikov, and Swidnicki, 1993 documented from Poland from the Oligocene Period. We contacted numerous members of the biology and geology departments at UCSB (J. Thorsch, M. Brzezinski, L. Lisiecki, R. Warner, P. Schroeter, J. Alroy), only to come to the conclusion that the record is probably based on a trilobite whose name was incorrectly entered as H. hollardi. Thus, H. hollardi appears to be strictly a western Atlantic species. Acknowledgments. We greatly appreciate the cooperation and scientific interest of Captain Ernie Milward of Dennis, MA, in recognizing the importance of the specimen of H. hollardi that he collected in his lobster pot and saved on ice for examination; he also carefully checked his log books to supply us with accurate information for the locality of the 2013 specimen, and an estimated collection location for that of the specimen photographed in 2012. We thank James Manning, at the National Marine Fisheries Service in Woods Hole, for sending us the 2013 specimen for examination and deposit in the National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC. The photographs of the specimen while still fresh and after preservation and the radiograph were taken by Sandra Raredon of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. We received help from the following curators/collection managers and field biologists: Karsten Hartel, MCZ, Cambridge, MA; John Galbraith and Tom Munroe, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Woods Hole, MA, and Washington, DC; Susan Mochel, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL; Kent Carpenter, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA; Eric Hilton, Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Gloucester Point, VA; Antony Harold, College of Charleston, Grice Marine Laboratory, Charleston, SC; Cesar Amaral, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The manuscript was improved by the constructive suggestions of K. Hartel (MCZ), Lou Van Guelpen (Huntsman Marine Science Centre, NB, Canada), and an anonymous reviewer; Diane M. Tyler edited several versions of the manuscript. Literature Cited Lopes, P.R.D., J.T. de Oliveira-Silva, C. da Cruz Martins, and G. Olavo. 2009. Hollardia hollardi Poey, 1861: First record of family Triacanthodidae (Actinopterygii: Tetraodontiformes) from Brazilian waters. Interciencia 34(3):199–201. Matsuura, K. 2002. Order Tetraodontiformes. Pp. 1960–2015. In K.E. Carpenter (Ed.). The Living Marine Resources of the Western Central Atlantic. Vol. 3, Bony Fishes Part 2 (Opisthognathidae to Molidae). Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy. McEachran, J.D., and J.D. Fechhelm. 2005. Fishes of the Gulf of Mexico. Vol. 2: Scorpaeniformes to Tetraodontiformes. University of Texas, Austin, TX. 1004 pp. Robins, C.R., and G.C. Ray. 1986. A Field Guide to the Atlantic Coast Fishes of North America. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA. 354 pp. Tyler, J.C. 1968. A monograph on plectognath fishes of the superfamily Triacanthoidea. Monograph 16. Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, PA. 364 pp.