ABSTRACT
Damselfish taxonomy is as old as taxonomy itself. It formed a part of the establishment of our modern system of zoological nomenclature, as descriptions of the two damselfish species of found in the Mediterranean (Abudefduf saxatilis and Chromis chromis) were included in Linnæus’s Systema Naturae (1758), though at the time they were referred to as Chaetodon saxatilis and Sparus chromis. Chromis chromis had been previously described in Peter Artedi’s Ichthyologia (1738), which is often considered the foundational text for the formal discipline of ichthyology. “Chromis” (χρομισ) is also mentioned in the first great western biology text: Aristotle’s History of Animals (4th century BCE). Although Aristotle’s “Chromis” was probably not a damselfish, his korakinos (κορακιυοσ) was likely Chromis chromis itself (Gill 1911). One could therefore consider the study of damselfishes to be as old as the science of biology (see Chapter I for further details).
