Note 7 - Maylandia cyneusmarginata spelling

Note 7 - Maylandia cyneusmarginata spelling Correct original spelling of Maylandia cyneusmarginata

Stauffer, Bowers, Kellogg, & McKaye (1997) gave the specific epithet cyneusmarginatus to one of ten new species they described. They gave the etymology of this name as follows: "The name cyneusmarginatus, from the Greek, meaning blue margin to note the blue marginal band in the dorsal fin" (p. 202).

It appears that this spelling is a lapsus (inadvertent error) for cyaneusmarginatus (which could have been more correctly formed as cyaneomarginatus), from the Greek kyanos, kyaneos, meaning blue or dark blue - as in Stauffer's own Pseudotropheus cyaneus. However, the new name is consistently spelled with cyn- throughout the paper. The only exception I noticed is in the legend to the symbols in fig. 14, where the missing "a" is inserted, but in the wrong place: "cyneausmarginatus" [sic].

Stauffer and co-authors are given to dropping letters arbitrarily when coining names, perhaps to improve euphony, but when doing so they point this out in the etymologies. An example from this same paper is thapsinogen: "The name thapsinogen was respelled from the Greek thapsinogenion, meaning yellow chin..." (p. 214).

Thus, it appears that misspelling cyneusmarginatus was unintentional. Because it is used almost consistently throughout the paper, however, it may have to be considered the correct original spelling, even though it is clearly misspelled. (In its current combination with the genus Maylandia, the specific epithet needs to be changed to cyneusmarginata to agree with the feminine gender of the genus.)

The Cichlid Fishes of Lake Malawi, Africa: MalawiCichlids.com