12 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. Ill 



Family SERRANIDAE: Seabasses 

 Genus ANTHIAS Bloch, 1792 



Body oblong, compressed ; mouth large ; premaxillaries protractile ; 

 maxillary exposed, covered with scales, with a supplemental bone ; 

 teeth in jaws villi form, intermixed with canines, a triangular patch 

 on vomer and an elongate one on palatines, a few or none on tongue ; 

 gill rakers long and slender; preopercle serrate, without antrorse 

 spines ; lateral line complete, running close to dorsal outline, abruptly 

 decurved under last rays of dorsal; scales covering head and body, 

 smooth or ctenoid ; dorsal fin X, 12 to 18 ; anal fin III, 6 to 8 ; pectoral 

 fin about 17 or 18; ventral fin long, inserted under base of pec- 

 toral, I, 5. 



This genus was not represented in the collections on which U. S. 

 National Museum Bulletin 189, 1946, was based. However, Mr. 

 Barton obtained two specimens from fishermen at Talara, Peru, from 

 January to April, 1946, which he described (1947, p- 2) under the 

 name Holanthias sechurae. It seems now, however, that the nominal 

 genus Holanthias is not well founded, and that it is advisable to refer 

 the species to the genus Anthias for the present, along with other 

 related American species. 



This genus, although widely distributed in tropical and temperate 

 seas, until recently was known from the Western Hemisphere from 

 only one species reported from the Atlantic coast of South America. 

 Two very closely related species were described recently from the 

 eastern Pacific, one from off Cape San Lucas, Mexico, and the other 

 from Talara, Peru. 



ANTHIAS SECHURAE (Barton) 

 Figure 4 



Holanthias sechurae Barton, 1947, p. 2, fig. 2, Talara, Peru (description, based 

 on the holotype, 235 mm. in total length (A.M.N.H. No. 17082), and 

 a paratype 192 mm. in total length). 



Head 3.1 ; depth 3.1 ; D. X, 15; A. Ill, 7; P. 19; scales 55 or 56, 

 52 or 53 in lateral line. 



Body rather deep, compressed, dorsal outline more strongly convex 

 than the ventral ; snout a little longer than eye ; eye 4.0 in head 

 measured to tip of opercular spine; interorbital 4.0; mouth oblique; 

 lower jaw projecting; maxillary extending just beyond center of 

 eye, its greatest width two-thirds diameter of eye; tongue with a 

 considerable patch of fine granular teeth ; upper jaw anteriorly with 

 small canine teeth; lower jaw with similar teeth anteriorly and lat- 



