Hector's clingfish [SEP] parent taxon
Hector's clingfish
Hector's clingfish, "Gastroscyphus hectoris", is a clingfish of the family Gobiesocidae, the only species in the genus Gastrocyathus. It is found all down the east coast of New Zealand around the low water mark amongst seaweed, on rocky coastlines. Its length is up to SL. This species was described in 1876 by Albert Günther as "Crepidogaster hectoris" from a holotype collected on the south shore of the Cook Strait. Günther honoured the Scottish-born scientist James Hector (1834-1907)
("Mesoplodon hectori"), while the fifth was assumed to be a neonate Cuvier's beaked whale.
Following inclusion of one of these specimens in a mtDNA sequence database of beaked whales, it turned out that they seemed well distinct from "M. hectori" (Dalebout "et al." 1998). The other "Hector's" specimens from California were subsequently confirmed to belong to the same undescribed taxon (Dalebout 2002). The new species was formally described in 2002 by Dalebout "et al."