Plates I & II; Text-figures 1 & 2)T HE scarid fish Sparisoma rubripinne (PI.I, Fig. 1 ) was described by Valenciennes from Santo Domingo in 1839.The specific name alludes to the red color of the anal and pelvic fins.More important as a recognition character underwater is the yellow of the caudal peduncle and fin.The rest of the fish is drab, varying from gray to brown or olive.The edges of the scales are darker than the centers, and two pale bands traverse the chin.Adults of S. rubripinne are reef fishes.They appear to occupy shallower water, generally, than most other parrot fishes.When pursued, they sometimes swim into the foaming swirl of waves striking a coral reef or rocky shore.Or they may come to rest upon the bottom where they rapidly assume a mottled color pattern and match the surroundings remarkably well (Longley & Hildebrand, 1941 : 216, pi.28, fig.2) .This parrot fish is moderately abundant throughout the Caribbean.Breder (1938: 212) referred to it as a West Indian species and gave the continental range as Rio de Janeiro to Florida with stragglers rarely to Massachusetts.Beebe & Tee- Van (1933: 207) listed it as uncommon at Bermuda.Bauchot & Blanc (1961: 61) recorded it from the island of San Thome, apparently the first record of the genus Sparisoma from West Africa.Randall (1962) has presented data on the relatively rapid growth of this and five other West Indian parrot fishes based on tagging studies in the Virgin Islands.Twenty-nine recoveries of tagged rubripinne were made, nine of which represented fish at large with tags for
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Randall et al. (1963) studied this question.