COMMENTS
v. 6.0 – 27 Feb. 2024  view/download PDF

Family POLYMIXIIDAE Beardfishes

Polymixia Lowe 1836     poly, many; myxia, mixing, referring to how P. nobilis appears to combine characters from multiple groups of fishes (e.g., general aspect of Berycidae, chin barbels of Mullidae)

Polymixia berndti Gilbert 1905    in honor of Louis E. (or E. Louis) Berndt (1851-?), market inspector in Honolulu, Hawaii (USA), who secured type at a Honolulu fish market, and to whom the second season of investigations by the U. S. Fish Commission in the Hawaiian Islands owed much of its success

Polymixia busakhini Kotlyar 1992    in honor of Kotlyar’s friend, ichthyologist-turned-painter Sergey Vasilevich Busakhin (b. 1946), who contributed greatly to beryciform systematics with his 1982 revision of the family Berycidae (at the time, Polymixiidae was placed in the order Beryciformes)

Polymixia carmenae Caixeta, Oliveira & Melo 2024    in honor of Brazilian ichthyologist Carmen Lúcia Del Bianco Rossi-Wongtschowski, emeritus professor, Oceanográfico da Universidade de São Paulo, and former coordinator of the regional subcommittee Sul of the Program REVIZEE (Living Resources in the Brazilian Exclusive Economic Zone), for her lifetime dedication to study the biology and conservation of marine fishes, including this species

Polymixia fusca Kotthaus 1970    dark or dusky, referring to its brown ground coloration

Polymixia hollisterae Grande & Wilson 2021    in honor of Gloria E. Hollister (1900-1988), for her “landmark” contributions to deep-sea research (she was a key member of the William Beebe bathysphere expeditions in Bermuda), ichthyology, tropical exploration, conservation, and “pioneering” work for the Red Cross Blood Bank during WWII

Polymixia japonica Günther 1877    Japanese, referring to type locality off Hiroshima in the Seto Inland Sea of Japan (occurs throughout Western and central North Pacific)

Polymixia longispina Deng, Xiong & Zhan 1983    longus, long; spina, spine, presumably referring to fourth spiny ray of anal fin equal to length of first soft ray of anal fin, exceeding eye diameter, compared to substantially shorter fourth spiny ray of anal fin of P. fusca

Polymixia lowei Günther 1859    patronym not identified but almost certainly in honor of British biologist-clergyman Richard Thomas Lowe (1802-1874), who proposed the genus in 1836

Polymixia nobilis Lowe 1836    well known or distinguished, allusion not explained, perhaps referring to its notable combination of characters (see genus)

Polymixia salagomeziensis Kotlyar 1991    –ensis, suffix denoting place: Sala y Gomes ridge, southeastern Pacific, type locality and only known area of occurrence

Polymixia sazonovi Kotlyar 1992    in honor of Yuriya (also spelled Yurii) Igorevich Sazonov (d. 2002), for his “large contribution to the study of deep-water ichthyofauna of the world’s oceans” (translation)

Polymixia yuri Kotlyar 1982    in honor of ichthyologist Yuri Nikolayevich Shcherbachev (Institute of Oceanology, Academy of Sciences of the USSR), who, upon checking specimens from the southeastern Pacific, suggested they were an undescribed species [apparently a noun in apposition, without the patronymic “i”]