Blue Trevally - Taxonomy and Naming

Taxonomy and Naming

The blue trevally is classified within the genus Carangoides, a group of fish commonly known as jacks and trevallies. Carangoides falls into the jack and horse mackerel family Carangidae, itself part the order Perciformes, in the suborder Percoidei.

The species was first described by the Swedish naturalist Peter Forsskål in 1775 based on a specimen taken from the Red Sea. He named the species Scomber ferdau, thus relating it to the mackerels before the family Carangidae was bought into existence with the creation of Lacépède's genus Caranx. With the advent of carangid taxonomy, the species was transferred first to Caranx and finally to Carangoides where it has remained to this day. Gilbert Percy Whitley attempted to separate the species into its own genus; Ferdauia, although this classification is not accepted. The species was independently described and named a number of times after its initial naming, with this and confusion with Carangoides orthogrammus in the Indo-Pacific giving rise to a complex history of synonymies. These later names were often transferred between genera before being finally sunk into the name Carangoides ferdau and as such are considered to be invalid junior synonyms. The specific epithet of ferdau refers to a person of the name 'Ferdau', probably the name of the collector of the holotype specimen.