Akarotaxis
Akarotaxis is a genus of marine ray-finned fish belonging to the family Bathydraconidae, the Antarctic dragonfish. There are two species: Akarotaxis nudiceps and Akarotaxis gouldae. They are found in the Southern Ocean along the continental shelf of Antarctica.
Taxonomy
Akarotaxis was first described as a genus in 1980 by the American ichthyologist Hugh Hamilton DeWitt and the French ichthyologist Jean-Claude Hureau. Akarotaxis nudiceps was described in 1916 as Bathydraco nudiceps by the British-born Australian zoologist Edgar Ravenswood Waite with the type locality given as Queen Mary Land off the Shackleton Ice Shelf. The type was collected by the Australasian Antarctic Expedition. The generic name compounds akaro meaning "short" or "small" with "taxis" which means "line" or "row", a reference to the short upper lateral line, which comprises lees than 10 tubular scales. The specific name nudiceps means "naked head", thought to be an allusion to the absence of scales on the head despite Waite not mentioning this trait.Akarotaxis gouldae was described in August 2024, based on specimens exclusively found in a 400 km stretch of coastline in the western Antarctic Peninsula, from Lapeyrère Bay in the north to Adelaide Island in the south. The describers refrain from citing this as strong evidence of distribution, as it may be an artifact of sampling bias. The specific name was coined in honor of the U.S. Antarctic Research and Supply Vessel Laurence M. Gould, and not the namesake of the vessel itself. A. gouldae was coined in the feminine form specifically to honor the ship, reflecting the practice of assigning ships female pronouns.