Bioacoustics of Hippasa lingxianensis

Remarks. Wang et al. (1985) recorded and redescribed a species that they identified as H. pantherina in China for the first time. However, their figures are different from those of Tikader & Malhotra (1980: 277, figs 72–76) , who synonymized H. pantherina with H. greenalliae on the basis of type material. This is clearly a misidentification. Yu & Song (1988) were aware that “ H. pantherina ” of Wang et al. (1985) and H. lingxianensis of Yin & Wang (1980) were the same species. However, they did not note the misidentification by Wang et al . (1985) , therefore they incorrectly synonymized H. lingxianensis with “ H. pantherina ”. Based on the material from Japan , Tanikawa (2007) described a new species as H. babai , without comparison with Chinese material or figures of “ H. pantherina ” or H. lingxianensis . Although we have not been able to examine the types of Hippasa pantherina and Hippasa babai , we have made detailed comparisons of the figures of Yin & Wang (1980) , Wang et al . (1985) and Tanikawa (2007) , and we conclude that they are all the same species, different from H. greenalliae of India . Therefore, the specific name, H. lingxianensis Yin & Wang, 1980 should be revalidated and H. babai Tanikawa, 2007 should be a junior synonym of it.