Munroe and Ross: Distribution and life history of Citharichthys gymnorhinus and C. cornutus 
327 
as also occurs in C. cornutus , may extend for more than 
one-half of the standard length of the individual. Im- 
mature females of both species are identified by their 
shorter, more triangularly shaped ovaries that have 
either not yet begun to elongate, or that are only in the 
earliest stages of posterior elongation. 
Results and discussion 
Biological and ecological information from 594 C. cor- 
nutus (Appendix 1) and 214 C. gymnorhinus (Appendix 
2) were included in this study. Of the 594 C. cornutus, 
size data were available for 566 individuals. Sizes were 
not available or were not taken for 28 of the C. cornutus ; 
however, geographic and bathymetric data associated 
with these individuals were included in appropriate sum- 
maries. Size information was taken from 196 of the 214 
C. gymnorhinus included in the study. One individual 
(a mature male) had a regenerated caudal region, and 
therefore it could not be measured accurately, and size 
data from this specimen were excluded. Depth of capture 
information was known for 578 of the 594 C. cornutus 
and for all 214 of the C. gymnorhinus included in the 
study. 
Sex and maturity information was compiled from 430 
of 566 C. cornutus that were measured. Sex could not 
be determined macroscopically for C. cornutus smaller 
than 20.0 mm. For 135 C. cornutus , although size in- 
formation was available, no information was provided 
to determine the sex of these fishes. One specimen was 
damaged during collection and its sex could not be 
determined. Sex could not be determined for another 
individual of 68 mm because the gonad appeared to be 
undeveloped (macroscopic appearance was neither that 
of a typical testes or ovary) and although this individ- 
ual is well within the size range for adults (see below), 
it does not feature any external sexually dimorphic 
characters typical of adult males, which also precluded 
macroscopic determination of its sex. Sex and maturity 
were determined for 190 of 214 C. gymnorhinus. We 
did not examine 25 C. gymnorhinus, including seven 
for which size data were available (8-38 mm); thus no 
information on their sex or maturity was available. 
Citharichthys cornutus (Gunther 1880) 
Taxonomic note 
Gunther (1880) described Rhomboidichthys cornutus 
from specimens taken on the continental shelf in the 
western South Atlantic off Brazil. Later that year, Goode 
(1880) provided a description of Citharichthys unicornis 
based on three specimens (USNM 26003: 3 syntypes) 
collected on the outer continental shelf off southern 
New England (actually at a latitude off New Jersey; 
see Fowler, 1952). Norman (1934) first considered these 
two nominal species to be conspecific and this decision 
has been followed by subsequent authors, but the status 
of these nominal species is in need of further study. 
During the interim between Goode’s (1880) description 
of C. unicornis and Norman’s (1934) placement of this 
species in the synonymy of C. cornutus, several stud- 
ies were published in which this species was listed 
or in which ecological, distributional, and systematic 
information was reported under the name C. unicornis. 
These earliest reports of C. cornutus from the western 
North Atlantic (Jordan and Gilbert, 1883; Gunther, 
1887; Jordan and Goss, 1889; Goode and Bean, 1895; 
Jordan and Evermann, 1898; Evermann and Marsh, 
1902; Parr, 1931) were overlooked in nearly all contem- 
porary compilations of information on the species, in 
part because C. unicornis Goode was not recognized as 
a junior synonym for C. cornutus (Gunther). 
The series of specimens reported in Goode and Bean 
(1895) comprises at least two species, including C. uni- 
cornis (-cornutus) and C. gymnorhinus (see below). 
Parr’s study (1931) may also have contained a mixture 
of both species, but because he did not list any specific 
collection data for the 68 specimens from the USNM 
and MCZ identified as C. unicornis in his study, the 
possibility that two species were intermingled cannot 
be proven definitively. The majority of specimens of C. 
unicornis available to Parr from the USNM fish collec- 
tion were those collected earlier during cruises of the 
RV Albatross and reported in Goode and Bean (1895). 
Several of these lots comprise mostly specimens of C. 
gymnorhinus ; therefore, if these were the same speci- 
mens examined by Parr, it seems likely that his data 
set was compromised because it would have contained 
a mixture of at least two species. 
Geographic distribution 
Fifty-six different field collections (Appendix 1) con- 
taining juvenile and adult specimens of C. cornutus 
encompassed the geographic range from the outer con- 
tinental shelf off New Jersey to the continental shelves 
off the northern coasts of the Bahamas, Cuba, Puerto 
Rico, and the Lesser Antilles (Fig. 3). All but five collec- 
tions occurred south of 35°N latitude. Among collections 
examined were four from off New Jersey (we could not 
find specimens from the second location off NJ reported 
by Goode, 1880), seven from off North Carolina, 22 off 
South Carolina, three off Georgia, nine off Florida, five 
from the Bahamas, one off Cuba, two off Puerto Rico, 
and three others from the eastern Caribbean Sea. One 
early record (USNM 111520) purportedly of this species 
from off North Carolina was misidentified as Citharich- 
thys unicornis (=C. cornutus) by Hildebrand (1941). This 
56-mm total length (TL) male, taken on 13 September 
1914, off Cape Lookout by the RV Fish Hawk at a depth 
of about 92 m (50 fm) is actually C. gymnorhinus, and 
the significance of this specimen is discussed under the 
account for that species. 
Our knowledge concerning the geographic occurrence 
of C. cornutus in the western North Atlantic Ocean 
is now improved through the inclusion of previously 
published distributional data, by highlighting data for 
specimens previously listed only in published tables 
