Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 57(1) March 2000 29 Case 3113 Betta Bleeker, 1850 (Osteichthyes, Perciformes): proposed conservation of specific names by the suppression of Micracanthus marchei Sauvage, 1879 H.H. Tan and Peter K.L. Ng Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore 119260, Republic of Singapore (e-mail:
[email protected]) Abstract. The purpose of this apphcation is to conserve the specific names of 'fighting fishes' which belong to the Southeast Asian genus Betta Bleeicer, 1850 (family OSPHRONEMIDAE (or BELONTiiDAE ot ANABANTiDAE)). The name Micracanthus marchei Sauvage, 1879 was given to a taxon supposedly from West Africa, but the poorly preserved holotype (and only specimen) clearly belongs to Betta. M. marchei has been suggested to be a senior synonym of B. spiendens Regan, 1910, but the holotype more closely resembles B. smaragdina Ladiges, 1972, B. imbellis Ladiges, 1975 or a newly discovered species from Cambodia. It is proposed that the unused name M. marchei should be suppressed to conserve the specific names of the Betta species. Keywords. Nomenclature; taxonomy; Osteichthyes; Perciformes; osphronemtoae; Betta; Betta spiendens; Betta smaragdina; Betta imbellis; Micracanthus marchei; fighting fishes; Southeast Asia. 1. Sauvage (1879) described a new genus and species, Micracanthus marchei, on the basis of a single specimen said to be from Doume, in the 'pays des Okandas, haut Ogooue' in Gabon, West Africa; the species was named after the explorer Alfred Marche who had supposedly collected it in that area. Roberts (1981, p. 91) examined the holotype of M. marchei; he concluded that it is a specimen of the extremely well-known Southeast Asian 'fighting fish" Betta spiendens Regan, 1910 (p. 782), and that Sauvage had wrongly attributed it to Africa (as he also did when establishing the name of a tetraodontid species Chonerhinos africanus in the same paper). Roberts mentioned Article 23 of the then current Code, and pointed out that because of its very wide usage the specific name of B. spiendens should not be displaced by marchei. The synonymy of M. marchei and B. spiendens was recorded by Eschmeyer (1998, p. 1015). There is indeed no doubt (see Tan & Ng, in press) that Micracanthus Sauvage, 1879 (p. 95) is a junior subjective synonym of Betta Bleeker, 1850 (p. 12, type species by monotypy B. trifasciata Bleeker, 1850), a genus confined to Southeast Asia. Jordan (1919, p. 342) provided the replacement name Oshimia for Micracanthus because of its supposed homonymy with Micracanthus Swainson, 1839 (kyphosidae), but he did not comment on its taxonomic identity. Neither Micracanthus nor Oshimia have ever been used as valid names and both are later than Betta. 2. Roberts (1981) commented that since the type specimen of Micracanthus marchei was [in his opinion] conspecific with Betta spiendens, it was originally
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