A New Species of Rainbow Sardine in the Genus Dussumieria (Teleostei: Clupeiformes: Dussumieriidae) from New Guinea and Australia

Dussumieria apollo, new species, is described based on 34 specimens collected from the southern coast of Papua New Guinea and northern coast of Australia. The unique combination of characters including forms of body scales (numerous longitudinal striae on posterior part), teeth on mouth roof (numerous rows of conical teeth on anterior parts of palatine and pterygoids forming a band), deep body, low number of gill rakers, and several proportional measurements separated the new species from all congeners. To evaluate the validity of the new species, four barcode sequences (three of them newly determined for this study) of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) cytochrome oxidase I (COI) gene were compared with those of 35 specimens belonging to seven other valid species of Dussumieria. Our molecular analysis corroborated the validity of D. apollo, new species, which forms a monophyletic group diverging from any congener by >8.0% mean uncorrected genetic distances.