Gobiodon fulvus Herre, 1927

Gobiodon fulvus Herre, 1927 View in CoL : Calapan Coralgoby

Synonyms or described as: No recorded synonyms.

Description: Gobiodon fulvus has little published information available. As pointed out by Herler et al. (2013), this species is very rarely referred to in the literature, and the few occurrences that can be found do have some differences to the original description by Herre (1927). The original description by Herre (1927) was missing the description of light bars on the head and pale orange body, however this body colour and lack of patterns could indicate that the description was based on a preserved specimen, as many were in this time period. Current descriptions include a dark body with two light lines either side of the eye, two light lines before the pectoral fin, a black opercular margin spot and white lines along the base of the second dorsal and anal fins ( Emery and Winterbottom, 1986; Herler, Bogorodsky and Suzuki, 2013) ( Figure 14 View FIGURE 14 ). The description does share a resemblance to that of G. oculolineatus but can be easily distinguished as G. oculolineatus has bright blue lines rather than white and no additional lines either side of the opercular margin spot.

Distribution: The currently known distribution for this description is the northwestern Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean ( Herler, Bogorodsky and Suzuki, 2013; GBIF.Org, 2024).

Habitat: No coral preferences are known.

Status: As of the last assessment, the species was listed as ‘Vulnerable’ ( Larson, 2020g).

Sociality: This species has not been included in any known descriptions of sociality.

Genetics: Gobiodon fulvus was included in a genetic analysis conducted by Herler et al. (2013), utilising specimens matching the description supplied above from the Maldives and Taiwan. These specimens were found to closely related to G. aoyagii and G. bicalvolineatus and the adjacent clade containing G. histrio , G. erythrospilus , G. fuscoruber , G. axillaris and G. ater .