A single postlarva (9.72 mm in standard length) specimen of Crossorhombus azureus (Alcock, 1889) belonging to the family Bothidae, was collected using a bongo net from the southern sea of Korea on December 10, 2019. This species is characterized by having spines on post basipterygial processes. It has two eyes located at the opposite side in head, which accordingly belongs to pre-metamorphosis stage. Melanophores are distributed on the dorsal and anal fin base on the right side (blind side), which is regarded as a useful identification key distinguishing C. azureus from congeneric species in their postlarval stage. A molecular analysis based on mitochondrial DNA COI sequences showed that our specimen was closely matched to adult C. azureus (K2P distance = 0.017). As there is no Korean name for the genus Crossorhombus in spite of presence of Crossorhombus kobensis and its Korean name “Go-be-dung-geul-neob-chi” in Korea, we proposed a new Korean name “Dung-geul-neob-chi-sog” for the genus Crossorhombus and “Pa-lang-dung-geul-neob-chi” for the species C. azureus.
We found ten species of larvae belonging to the family Pleuronectidae as a result of analysis on ichthyoplankton collected monthly from the East Sea, Yellow Sea, Korea Strait and East China Sea between February 2016 and May 2018 using bongo net. The ten species of pleuronectid larvae were divided into three groups in morphology. Group A had three or four bars on the lateral side of the tail: Glyptocephalus stelleri, G. kitaharae, Pseudopleuronectes yokohamae, and Hippoglossoides dubius. Group B had a row of melanophores along the dorsal and ventral side of tail: Cleisthenes pinetorum, Eopsetta grigorjewi, Dexistes rikuzenius, and Platichthys bicoloratus. Group C had dense melanophores which are covering trunk and tail entirely except caudal peduncle: Platichthys cornutus and Platichthys japonicus. The three groups did not associate with previous molecular phylogenetic studies except for the G. stelleri and G. kitaharae of the group A.