An updated, illustrated inventory of the marine fishes of the US Virgin Islands.

The US Virgin Islands (USVI) include St. John and St. Thomas on the Puerto Rican Platform (PRP) and St. Croix, isolated by 2000 m deep water 45 km south of that platform. Previous inventories of the marine fishes of these islands include a comprehensive 2014 checklist of the fishes of St. Croix and a list of the fishes of the PRP produced in 2000. The latter list noted the locations of many records of the plateau's fishes, allowing the construction of a combined inventory for St. John and St. Thomas. Those two islands are treated here as a single faunal unit because they are only 3.5 km apart on a shared shallow shelf with various islets and reefs in between. Here we provide updated information on those two USVI (St. Croix and St. John-Thomas) marine fish faunas. The additions to the St. Croix and St. John-Thomas inventories presented here are based on a combination of information from the two sources indicated above, more recent publications dealing with those faunas, a review of location records on various online sources of biogeographic data, and voucher photographs taken of fishes in the field by authors of this paper and other citizen scientists. This assessment increased the known fauna of St. Croix by 7.5% to 585 species. The inventory for St. John-Thomas increased by 39.9% from 401 species on the 2000 PRP list to 561 with the inclusion of records from other sources. On-site mtDNA (COI) barcodes are available for approximately one-third of the species of the St. John-Thomas fauna, but for only one species collected at St. Croix. A set of underwater photographs of 372 species (34 of them representing the sole record of a species) from St. John-Thomas and of 11 shallow-water species added to the St. Croix fauna is included. These represent occurrence vouchers and also are intended to facilitate future work that builds on the present compendium.

Erratum: Addendum and Corrigendum: Robertson DR, Estapé CJ, Estapé AM, Richter L, Peña E, Victor B (2022) An updated, illustrated inventory of the marine fishes of the US Virgin Islands. Zookeys 1103: 79-122. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.1103.83795.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.1103.83795.].

The marine fishes of St Eustatius Island, northeastern Caribbean: an annotated, photographic catalog.

Sint Eustatius (Statia) is a 21 km2 island situated in the northeastern Caribbean Sea. The most recent published sources of information on that island's marine fish fauna is in two non-governmental organization reports from 2015-17 related to the formation of a marine reserve. The species-list in the 2017 report was based on field research in 2013-15 using SCUBA diving surveys, shallow "baited underwater video surveys" (BRUVs), and data from fishery surveys and scientific collections over the preceding century. That checklist comprised 304 species of shallow (mostly) and deep-water fishes. In 2017 the Smithsonian Deep Reef Observation Project surveyed deep-reef fishes at Statia using the crewed submersible Curasub. That effort recorded 120 species, including 59 new occurrences records. In March-May 2020, two experienced citizen scientists completed 62 SCUBA dives there and recorded 244 shallow species, 40 of them new records for Statia. The 2017-2020 research effort increased the number of species known from the island by 33.6% to 406. Here we present an updated catalog of that marine fish fauna, including voucher photographs of 280 species recorded there in 2017 and 2020. The Statia reef-fish fauna likely is incompletely documented as it has few small, shallow, cryptobenthic species, which are a major component of the regional fauna. A lack of targeted sampling is probably the major factor explaining that deficit, although a limited range of benthic marine habitats may also be contributing.

An update to the inventory of shore-fishes from the Parque Nacional Sistema Arrecifal Veracruzano, Veracruz, México.

Data on marine and brackish-water fishes recorded in the area of the Parque Nacional Sistema Arrecifal Veracruzano in the southwest Gulf of Mexico were extracted from online aggregators of georeferenced location records, the recent ichthyological literature reviewed, and collections and observations made to provide a more complete faunal inventory for that park. Those actions added 95 species to a comprehensive inventory published in 2013, and brought the total to 472 species, an increase of 22%. Seventy-four percent of the additions came from online aggregators of georeferenced species records, which clearly demonstrates the value of reviewing and incorporating such data into species inventories. However, different aggregators recorded different sets of species, and some of their data were linked to outdated taxonomy or included identification errors. Hence individual records from multiple aggregators need to be obtained and reviewed for such issues when using such data to compile and revise faunal inventories. Existing lists also need to be carefully reviewed to ensure that errors are not perpetuated during updates.