FRESH-WATER FISHES— MYERS 359 



tive in the Florida fresh-water cyprinodont Chriopeops goodei. With 

 the gar and Cyprinodon, this forms the only element in the entire 

 West Indian fresh-water fish fauna that points toward a North 

 American connection. Cyprinodon certainly came by sea or mnd, 

 and the gar is not really good evidence until we know more about 

 it. I consider that the weak little Cubanichthys and Chriopeops, 

 forming by themselves a group not particularly close to other genera, 

 may have had relatives, now extinct, in Central America. The 

 most striking element in the Cuban fish fauna are the five genera 

 which form the poeciliid tribe Girardinini.^^ They form a very dis- 

 tinctive group, distantly related to Central American types, and 

 must have arisen in Cuba a long time ago. Gambusia, with two 

 Cuban species, belongs to the same subfamily, but to a widespread 

 tribe. There is one Cuban Limia, a West Indian genus of another 

 subfamily. 



Hispaniola (Haiti and Santo Domingo) has only cichlids and 

 cyprinodonts.^^ The single well-known cichlid is almost identical 

 with the Cuban one; a doubtful species (not yet named) is laiown 

 from a single specimen. But there is a fossil cichHd from the Mio- 

 cene differing from the common living one only by a couple of verte- 

 brae — the only fossil of the present Antillean fresh-water fishes yet 

 discovered. It would seem, therefore, that cichlids have been in 

 Hispaniola since the Miocene. The only oviparous cyprinodonts 

 reported from the island are a large Cyprinodon, living in the Haitian 

 salt lakes, and a Rivulus based on one specimen captured under 

 peculiar circumstances on Saona Island off the southeast coast. The 

 viviparous forms belong to the ubiquitous genus Gambusia, to Limia, 

 which is known outside Hispaniola only by the Cuban and Jamaican 

 species, and to Mollienisia, a genus known elsewhere only on the 

 mainland. There are three Gambusias, related to Cuban and Jamai- 

 can species. Limia, with eight species in the island, probably orig- 

 inated there; it is close to Poecilia. The Hispaniolan Mollienisia 

 is an isolated form, not at all close to the Florida one, and perhaps 

 finds its closest relationship in the species of the coast of Colombia 

 or Panama. 



Jamaica has only viviparous cyprinodonts. Single old records of 

 a South American catfish and a Central American cichlid are prob- 

 ably mistakes, but I should not be surprised to see a real cichlid turn 

 up there. The cyprinodonts are four Gambusias and two Limias 

 related to Hispaniolan ones. 



Grand Cayman has one Gambusia. 



MHubbs (1924 and 1934). 



«' See Tee- Van (1935) and Myers (1928 and 1935). 



