Atergatis latissimus (H. Milne Edwards, 1834)

Atergatis latissimus (H. Milne Edwards, 1834) View in CoL

? Atergatis frontalis View in CoL — Shen 1940a: 224.

Taxonomy: Sakai (1939: as A. latissimus frontalis ), Tweedie (1947), Serène (1984).

Type: Holotype ñ MNHN 4125 About MNHN ( Serène 1984).

Type locality: Australia (as Nouvelle-Hollande).

Distribution: Western Indian Ocean to Central Pacific: from Madagascar, Mauritius, Christmas Island, to South China and Japan, to Sumatra and Marshall Islands ( Serène 1984).

Habitat: Shallow subtidal; coral reef-associated ( Sakai 1976).

Remarks: C.-J. Shen (1940a) listed four species of Atergatis for Hong Kong. Of these, species A. frontalis (De Haan, 1835) is now regarded as a junior synonym of A. latissimus (H. Milne Edwards, 1834) ( Tweedie 1947; Serène 1984; Davie 2002; Ng et al. 2008), a decision we follow herein (though note reservations expressed by De Man 1926).

The record of “ A. frontalis ” by Shen (1940a), however, has some problems. This author, in the same year, listed also this species in a checklist of South China ( Shen 1940c), citing De Man’s (1879: 85) record from Amoy (= Xiamen), noting also that he “examined some specimens from Hongkong ”. This record from Amoy, however, was later shown to be A. reticulatus De Haan, 1835 instead (De Man 1926). The unanswered questions are whether Shen (1940a) followed De Man’s (1879) original record of “ A. frontalis ” in listing the species and missed or misread his later correction of the identification (De Man 1926), and/or he actually had examined specimens of both species himself. As both species occur in the western Pacific, we retain both of Shen’s (1940a) records of A. reticulatus and A. frontalis (= A. latissimus ) for the moment.