The Osteology and Classification of the Ophichthid Eels of the Hawaiian Islands'

INTRODUCTION THE CLASSIFICATION of the eels of the family Ophichthidae is, as M yers and Storey (1939: 156) put it, in the utmost confusion . Their suggested solution, with which I heartily concur, is a sound anatomical study of all the included genera. This cannot be undertaken in the present paper as the family is of circum tropic al distribution and many of the genera are unavailable to me. Nevertheless, a rather large and representative group of these eels is present in the Hawaiian Islands . The osteology of the most divergent of these has been investigated in the hope of providing at least a basis for work on ophichthid relationships. The results of this study and of two oth ers already completed (Gosline, 1950, and in press) have borne out the necessity for the entire realignment of the Ophichthidae which Myers and Storey (1939: 157) predicted. The taxonomic section of this paper deals with all species of ophichthid eels recorded from the Hawaiian Islands (including Johnston Island) . One new genus, one new sub genus, and two new species are described , and a substirute specific name is proposed. These are as follows.