''Neocaristius heemstrai'' is a

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of ...

of fish in the family

Caristiidae Caristiidae, the manefishes, are a family of perciform fishes which today includes 19 extant species distributed in four genera. '' Chalcidichthys malacapterygius'' and '' Absalomichthys velifer'' are extinct species from the Upper Miocene of Sou ...

, the manefishes. It is native to the oceans of the southern hemisphere where it is known to occur at depths of from . This species grows to a length of SL. This fish was first described in 2006 and was moved to a

monotypic genus In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispe ...

of its own, ''Neocaristius'', in 2011.Stevenson, D. E. and C. P. Kenaley. (2011)
Revision of the manefish genus ''Paracaristius'' (Teleostei: Percomorpha: Caristiidae), with descriptions of a new genus and three new species.
''Copeia'' 2011(3) 385-99.

Etymology

The fish is named in honor of

Phillip C. Heemstra Phillip Clarence Heemstra (9 December 1941 – 29 August 2019) was an American-South African ichthyologist. He was born in Melrose Park, Illinois, United States as the son of Clarence William Heemstra and his wife, Lydia (born Epcke). He atten ...

(1941-2019), of the J.L.B. Smith Institute of Ichthyology in Grahamstown, South Africa, for his contributions to the studies of marine fishes, and in 1986 was the first to draw attention to this species.

References

Caristiidae Monotypic fish genera Taxa named by Nikolai Vasilyevich Parin Fish described in 2006 {{Perciformes-stub