PROCEEDINGS OF THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



issued iit^NvA, \Si^i hy 'Ae 



SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Vol. 85 Washington : 1938 No. 3038 



A NEW GENUS AND TWO NEW SPECIES OF COTTOID 

 FISHES FROM THE ALEUTIAN ISLANDS 



By Leonard P. Schui/tz 



During the summer of 1937, O. J. Murie and Victor B. Scheffer 

 collected some fishes for the U. S. Biological Survey while on an 

 expedition to the Aleutian Islands. While identifying these fishes 

 for the Department of Agriculture, I found among them two new 

 eottoids, which are described below. 



PHALLOCOTTUS, new genus 



Genotype. — Phallocottus ohtusus, new species. 



The characters of the genus are those of the species. 



This new genus difi^ers from all other cottoid genera in combining 

 the absence of palatine teeth and the arched lateral line with smooth 

 skin, short, bluntly rounded preopercular spine, gill membranes 

 broadly united and forming a wide free fold across isthmus, anus in 

 anterior third of the distance between insertion of pelvics and origin 

 of anal fin, I, 3 pelvics, among other characters. It is most closely 

 related to the Oligocottinae as defined by Hubbs, 1926,^ but differs 

 from them in the lack of palatine teeth and the blunt and rounded 

 preopercular spine. The genus Sigmistes^ upon re-examination of 

 one of the paratypes, shows in a clay impression three teeth at the 

 head of each palatine bone. 



^ Hubbs, Carl L., A revision of the fishes of the subfamily Oligocottinae. Occ. Pap. 

 Mus. Zool. Univ. Michigan, No. 171, pp. 1-18, 1926. 



53988—38 187 



