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A kind of frogfish overlooked for years and then rediscovered in the wild in 2008 has now been officially named as a new species. Its broad, flat face with forward-looking eyes, among other body features, and its DNA distinguish it from other Histiophryne frogfish, researchers report in the journal Copeia.

It behaves unusually too, for example squirting out little jets of water that propel it along in irregular, arcing hops.

What earned the fish the species epithet psychedelica are the swirling stripes. Sports divers spotted it as a novelty off Indonesia’s Ambon Island in 2008 and sent pictures to Ted Pietsch of the University of Washington in Seattle. The images jogged his memory of two faded, damaged frogfish specimens from Bali he had been storing since 1992. Reexamining their almost white bodies, Pietsch could detect traces of once-glorious stripes like those of fish at Ambon documented by photographer David Hall. — Susan Milius

Citation:
Theodore W Pietsch, Rachel J. Arnold and David J. Hall. “A Bizarre New Species of Frogfish of the Genus Histiophryne (Lophiiformes: Antennariidae) from Ambon and Bali, Indonesia.” Copeia, February 2009.

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