''Neocaristius heemstrai'' is a

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

of fish in the family

Caristiidae Caristiidae, the manefishes, are a family of scombriform ray-finned fishes which today includes 19 extant taxon, extant species distributed in four genera. Taxonomy The following genera are known: * ''Caristius'' Theodore Nicholas Gill, Gill ...

, 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.

Etymology

The fish is named in honor of Phillip C. Heemstra (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 Taxa named by Ivan Andreevich Trunov Taxa named by Nikolai Vasilyevich Parin Fish described in 2006 {{Scombroidei-stub