The Inshore Fish Fauna of Johnston Island, a Central Pacific Atoll 1 
William A. Gosline 2 
INTRODUCTION 
This paper is primarily concerned with Cen- 
tral Pacific zoogeography. Its main purpose is 
to trace in so far as possible the derivation and 
the immigration and emigration routes of the 
Johnston Island inshore fish fauna. The im- 
portance of Johnston for a study of this sort 
lies in its position between the areas inhabited 
by the great tropical Pacific fauna to the south 
and the strongly endemic Hawaiian fauna to 
the north (Fig. 1). 
The first section of this paper records the 
fishes known from Johnston and presents the 
taxonomic interpretations upon which the 
zoogeographic treatment of the second sec- 
tion is based. 
Of the collections dealt with, the most 
important for this paper are those taken by 
V. E. Brock, Y. Yamaguchi, and the author 
at Johnston in February 1951. These collec- 
tions were made possible through the kind- 
ness of Colonel Cronau, then commanding 
officer of the island, and were greatly facili- 
tated by Lt. Col. Eaton and other members of 
the airforce who were there at the time. In 
addition, three small collections from the same 
island were turned over to me by Brock, 
Schaefer, and Francis respectively. Finally, a 
reexamination of certain fishes from Johnston 
recorded by Fowler and Ball (1925) was made 
possible through the courtesy of the staff of 
the Bernice P. Bishop Museum. 
1 Contribution No. 73, Hawaii Marine Laboratory. 
Manuscript received March 18, 1955. 
2 Department of Zoology and Entomology, Uni- 
versity of Hawaii. 
SECTION 1. FISHES RECORDED FROM 
JOHNSTON ISLAND 
Except for Schultz’s (1950: 548) reference 
to Cirrhitus alternatus , the following four 
works include or cite all of the published 
records on Johnston fishes. 
Smith and Swain (1882) recorded 27 species 
from the island, 5 of which they described 
as new. 
Fowler and Ball (1925) listed 72 species 
from Johnston collected by the "Tanager" 
Expedition of 1923. One of these was de- 
scribed as new. 
Schultz and collaborators (1953) in the first 
volume of their report on "Fishes of the 
Marshall and Marianas Islands" recorded 
specimens of about 9 Johnston species. Most 
of these were referred to only in passing, e.g., 
in tables; three, however, were described as 
new. 
Halstead and Bunker (1954), in a report on 
fish poisoning at Johnston Island, listed 60 
species investigated. 
One hundred and eighteen species of John- 
ston fishes have been seen by the present 
author. Species recorded from the island that 
have not been seen are marked in the species 
accounts with an asterisk; some of these al- 
most certainly represent misidentifications 
and others equally certainly do not, but any 
attempt to decide which are which would only 
lead to further misidentifications. 
It is easy to criticize others for recording 
species without also providing sufficient de- 
scriptive material to determine whether the 
record has been correctly identified. It is more 
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