Stalix

Abstract: 601 Family Opistognathidae includes three genera and several dozen species of small and medium sized trop ical fishes that dig burrows in the bottom with their huge mouth and spend most of the time in them. This group of fishes includes the genus Stalix Jordan et Snyder, 1902, which is characterized by modified, fork shaped anterior spines D, enclosed in a thick fin fold. This genus includes 12 valid species and one spe cies that does not have a suitable name. All species are known from single specimens caught in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, as well as in the Western Pacific from Japan and China to northern Australia; in the Vietnamese fauna, representatives of the genus Stalix have not yet been found (Smith Vaniz, 1989; Shino hara, 1999). During the trawling in Nha Trang bay in 2005, I for the first time collected two species of this genus, which rarely occurs in collections, one of which was new to science. This article is devoted to the description of this material. The study was performed by the method adopted for this group (Smith Vaniz, 1989). The shape of mod ified spines D was monitored by X ray photographs. The following abbreviations were used: (D, A, P, V, and C) dorsal, anal, pectoral, ventral, and caudal fins, respectively, and number of rays in them; sp. br.— number of gill rakers in the outer row on the first gill arch; squ—number of transverse rows of scales on body; vert.—number of vertebrae. When measure ments are specified, values for the holotype go first, and values for the paratypes are given in parentheses. The material was deposited in the Zoological Museum of Moscow State University (ZMMU) and the Insti tute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences (IO RAS), Moscow.