Threadfin Jack - Taxonomy and Naming

Taxonomy and Naming

The threadfin jack is classified within the genus Carangoides, one of a number of groups of fish referred to as jacks and trevallies. Carangoides is further classified in the family Carangidae, itself part of the suborder Percoidei and the order Perciformes; the perch-like fishes.

The species was first scientifically described by the American ichthyologist Theodore Gill, who named the species Carangoides dorsalis based on the holotype taken from the west coast of Central America. This name and description was published in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, in which Gill one year previously described another carangid; Vomer dorsalis. The state of carangid taxonomy at the time was rather confusing, with many synonymous genera and species present in the literature, and Vomer dorsalis was soon moved to Caranx, as was Carangoides dorsalis, creating a taxonomic homonym. To address this problem, the American ichthyologists David Starr Jordan and Charles Henry Gilbert in 1883 created the name Caranx otrynter as a replacement for the species originally named Carangoides dorsalis, basing their description on a new holotype specimen taken from Mazatlán, Mexico. The authors indicated that if Vomer was found to be a valid genus or subgenus, Vomer dorsalis could be reinstated and the original combination of Caranx dorsalis be restored. Despite V. dorsalis being transferred to Selene dorsalis, this never occurred and in a 1994 publication, Gerald Allen and D. Ross Robertson placed Caranx otrynter into the genus Carangoides, where it has remained ever since. The specific name otrynter is derived from Latin, and means 'a driver', in allusion to the whip-like ray of the second dorsal fin. The common names of the species 'threadfin jack' and 'thread pompano' also both refer to the filamentous, threadlike dorsal fin.