The sailfin molly, Poecilia latipinna, is a species of fish, of
the genus Poecilia. They inhabit fresh, brackish, and coastal
waters from North Carolina to Texas and the Yucatan Peninsula of
Mexico. The sailfin molly was originally described in 1821 as
Mollienesia latipinna by the naturalist Charles Alexandre
Lesueur . Lesueur based his description upon specimens from
freshwater ponds in the vicinity of New Orleans, Louisiana .
However, Lesueur described other collections of the sailfin
molly as Mollienesia multilineata in 1821, the same year in
which he described M. latipinna . This conflict created
confusion and eventually necessitated a ruling by the
International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN). In
1959, the ICZN placed precedence on the name Mollienesia
latipinna Lesueur 1821. In a landmark definitive work on
Poeciliid fishes, Donn Rosen and Reeve Bailey (1959) noted the
priority of Poecilia by Marcus Elieser Bloch and Johann Gottlob
Schneider (1801) with regards to Mollienesia by Lesueur (1