Abstract
In 1928, Fowler and Bean proposed the genus Wetmorella and described W.philippina on the basis of six specimens from the Philip-pines.Later, three species and one subspecies were added from the Marshall Islands and the Red Sea by Schultz and Marshall (1954): W.albofasciata, W.ocellata, W.triocellata and W.philippina bifasciata.The fishes of the genus are widely distributed in the Indo-Pacific region.However, no species has been recorded from Japan.
The authors obtained one labrid specimen at Kuroshima (24°25'N, 124°10'E).The fish is small (51.0 mm SL) and, in our first impression, seemed to resemble the young of Epibulus insidator (Pallas).We identified it as W.philippina, which is new to Japan.Two additional specimens were collected at the same locality (but at a greater depth) in 1978 and 1979 by Dr.Hitoshi Ida, Kitasato University.
In the present paper, we record W.philippina from Japan for the first time with discussion on the validity of W.ocellata.
