The Zoogeographic Relationships of Fanning Island Inshore Fishes

REPRESENTATIVE FANNING ISLAND INSHORE FISHES were collected by means of rotenone poisoning in January 1970. The collections were made with the objective of elucidating the zoogeographic relationships of the Line Islands fish fauna. The results are presented here. Zoogeographically, the Central Pacific forms an eastward extension of the great Indo-West Pacific faunal region centered today in the Austro-Malayan-Philippine area. The series of island archipelagos somewhat south of the equator and extending eastward without major breaks from New Guinea to the Tuamotus would seem to provide the axis of this extension. To the eastward along this axis or to the north or (presumably) south of it, the size of the fish fauna diminishes. Paralleling this east-west axis along its subtropical borders to the north and south are, apparently, further small components of the Austro-Malayan fish fauna which, in the Central Pacific, do not seem to be represented in the tropics. McCosker (1970) mentions some of the forms comprising the southern subtropical band. Microcanthus strigatus in Hawaii would seem to represent such a northern, again subtropical, component. Also along the northern border occurs the extensive endemism of the fishes in the Hawaiian chain (Gosline and Brock, 1960). This Hawaiian endemism, associated at least in part with the isolation of the Hawaiian chain, does not seem to be counterbalanced by any similar area on the southern border of the Central Pacific tropics. The above summary of Central Pacific fish zoogeography can be pieced together from scattered records, as has indeed been done by Fowler (1928), Ekman (1935), etc. Refinement of these general concepts must come from analyses of more quantitative data. For the