Additions to the marine fish fauna of the US Virgin Islands (2024)

Abstract

In 2022, a comprehensive, curated, updated list of the marine fish fauna of the US Virgin Islands drew on existing published sources of information, museum records available from online databases of various museums, mtDNA-barcode sequences available from GenBank and BOLD, new collections of specimens, and an extensive set of underwater photographs of fishes from St. Croix, St. John, and St. Thomas. Robertson et al. (2022a) documented 561 species from St. John and St. Thomas, which are only 3.5 km apart on the eastward extension of the shallow Puerto Rican shelf, and 585 species from St. Croix, which is isolated from the other two islands by 45 km of deep water. Since the 2022 inventory, some of the authors have continued to collect data on reef fishes in the area and here we report on the addition of 18 species of reef-associated fishes and one non-reef species (and also one subtraction) to the marine fauna of St. John and St. Thomas and three reef-associated species to the fauna of St. Croix, raising the totals to 579 and 588 species respectively.