Acanthurus leucosternon
Bennett, 1833 · speciesAt a glance
Sources9 archives
Databases and archives Acanthurus leucosternon's data was compiled from.
WikipediaWikimedia Foundation14 languages↗
BioWikiNetmultilingual Wikipediamultilingual↗
GBIFGlobal Biodiversity Information Facility1 962 records↗
OBISOcean Biodiversity Information System850 records↗
ENAEuropean Nucleotide Archive · EMBL-EBI1 eDNA detections↗
BOLD SystemsCentre for Biodiversity Genomics33 specimens↗
WikidataWikimedia Foundationstructured facts↗
Catalogue of LifeCOLtaxonomy↗
GLoBIGlobal Biotic Interactionsbiotic interactions↗Every layer below draws on the sources above — open one to explore it, or use ← → to move between tabs.
Acanthurus leucosternon is a marine tropical fish belonging to the surgeonfish family, Acanthuridae. Its common names are powder blue tang and powder-blue surgeonfish.
No narrative description available for this taxon yet.
Size & morphology1
Habitat & environment2
Uses & economy1
Other traits3
A DNA barcode is a short, standardised stretch of genes that works like a fingerprint — enough to tell one species from another. Below is the molecular trace Acanthurus leucosternon has left across the world's sequence archives.
At a glance
★ the standard DNA barcode for this group — the short region actually read to tell this species apart. The rest are extra genes sequenced along the way.
Besides the big genome in the nucleus, cells carry a small, circular loop of DNA inside the cell's energy factories — the mitochondria. It is inherited almost only from the mother and is a leftover from ancient bacteria that moved into the cell. The mitochondrial markers above (ND*, COX, CYTB…) are read from exactly this loop. Outer ring = one strand, inner ring = the other.
How far back this lineage goes — and how we know. Everything here is measured in Ma, short for “mega-annum”: millions of years ago. The chart reads left to right like a calendar of the Earth, from the deep past on the left to today at the right edgetop to bottom like a core drilled through the Earth, from the deep past at the top down to today at the bottom.
At a glance
When this lineage existed
How to read this: the coloured strip along the bottomdown the left is the geological calendar — the standard epochs (Pliocene, Pleistocene…) every museum uses, shown so you can see which chapter of Earth's history this lineage lived in. This lineage is a young one, so the strip is zoomed in to epochs — the finer subdivisions inside a period. The orange marker is the DNA clock: DNA accumulates mutations at a roughly steady rate, so comparing this species' DNA with its relatives estimates when the lineage split off — independently of any fossil.
Record type2 812 records
Range
Depth
Wildobservation + sensor
Human sightings and records, or camera-trap / sensor detections — someone (or a device) saw or captured the species in the wild.
Museum / Voucheredphysical evidence
Backed by a physical specimen — a herbarium sheet, sample or voucher held in a collection. “Vouchered” means supported by material evidence, not just an observation.
Wildobservation + sensor
Human sightings and records, or camera-trap / sensor detections — someone (or a device) saw or captured the species in the wild.
Holding institutions13 of 20 geolocated
Institutions and collections holding physical, vouchered specimens of this species — click a row to fly to it on the map.
| Institution | Specimens |
|---|---|
| South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversitylocation not on record | 33 |
| Washington, US | 15 |
| Toronto, CA | 12 |
| Chicago, US | 12 |
| 9 | |
| CASlocation not on record | 7 |
| Frankfurt am Main | 6 |
| Paris, FR | 5 |
| Sydney, AU | 5 |
| New Haven, US | 4 |
| Geneva, CH | 4 |
| Museo civico La Terra e l'Uomo di Crocetta del Montellolocation not on record | 3 |
| Wuzhou, CN | 2 |
| Western Australian Museumlocation not on record | 2 |
| South Kensington, GB | 2 |
| Cambridge, US | 1 |
| Academia Sinica, Biodiversity Research Centerlocation not on record | 1 |
| Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territorylocation not on record | 1 |
| Honolulu, US | 1 |
| Oregon State Universitylocation not on record | 1 |
Where the DNA of Acanthurus leucosternon was picked up in samples of water, soil or air — nobody saw the organism, only its DNA left behind. A trace is a clue that the species was near, not a confirmed sighting.
Signal
Where its DNA was found
How strong is each trace?
Modelled climatemodelled
How to read this: each dot is one detection of this species' DNA in an environmental sample. The confidence meter weighs how many independent studies and places back up the signal — one detection in one study is a hint; many across several studies is solid. Records dated before 2008 (when eDNA methods began) are treated as likely mislabeled and left off the map.