Aphareus furca

Aphareus furca, also called the small toothed jobfish, blue smalltooth jobfish, fork-tailed snapper, or snapper jobbyfish, is a marine ray-finned fish in the snapper family Lutjanidae. Its scientific name, furca, means "fork," referring to its deeply forked tail fin.

Taxonomy

The species was first described in 1801 as Labrus furca, with the type location given as Mauritius. In 1913, David Starr Jordan, John Otterbein Snyder, and Shigeho Tanaka designated Aphareus caerulescens as the type species for the genus Aphareus, which Georges Cuvier had created in 1830 with only that species. A. caerulescens is a synonym of A. furca.

Description

Adults have a bronze to blue-gray body, yellow fins, and long filaments at the tips of the tail fin. Males may show yellow on the head. The dorsal fin has 10 spines and usually 11 soft rays (sometimes 10), the anal fin has 3 spines and 8 soft rays, and the pectoral fins have 15 to 16 rays. The fish reaches a maximum length of 70 cm, but is more commonly around 25 cm.

Distribution

This species is found across the Indo-Pacific region, from south of Hawaii to the Pitcairn Islands, and from West to East Africa. Its range also extends from the Gulf of Mannar to southern Japan and southward to Australia. It has been collected at depths from 1 to 122 meters, with reports as deep as 302 meters. In the late 1990s, it appeared at 38.6% of sampling sites and made up 2.5% of the recorded biomass.

Between 2008 and 2014, density estimates in Pacific coral reef areas ranged from 2.5 to 41.2 individuals per hectare. Population size is affected by fishing; where fishing pressure was reduced, populations increased. The highest densities were recorded in the Line Islands (19.4 per hectare) and Phoenix Islands (63 per hectare). Lower densities, from 0.3 to 17.2 per hectare, were found in the Federated States of Micronesia, the Solomon Islands, remote islands near the Solomon Islands, Fiji, and Raja Ampat.

Habitat

Aphareus furca is a benthopelagic and pelagic species, typically inhabiting inshore coral and rocky reef areas, rocky bottoms, and clear water lagoons. It is piscivorous and is usually found alone or in small groups. Though most common at depths of 1 to 120 meters, it has been reported at depths of 300 meters.

The species is vulnerable to population declines from fishing.