Taxonomy and Naming
The western trumpeter whiting is one of 29 species in the genus Sillago, which is one of three divisions of the smelt whiting family Sillaginidae. The smelt-whitings are Perciformes in the suborder Percoidea.
The species was first recorded by Lt. Emery of the HMS Beagle during the Australian leg of its voyage, with the lieutenant making a detailed sketch of the fish. This sketch and description was received by John Richardson in 1842, from which he described and named the species Sillago burrus without designating a holotype specimen, and furthermore the original sketch has apparently been lost. The location where the specimen was taken is also uncertain, with McKay narrowing down the range to between Depuch and Barrow Islands in northern Western Australia, with New Guinea an outside possibility. In 1985 McKay designated a neotype from the Dampier Archipelago, Western Australia.
The species has only ever been assigned one synonym, S. maculata burrus by Whitley in 1948 with apparently no reason given for the reassignment, although McKay also treated the species as a subspecies of S. maculata in his comprehensive revision of the Sillaginidae.
Read more about this topic: Western Trumpeter Whiting
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