Gymnothorax reticularis Bloch 1795

Smith, David G., Bogorodsky, Sergey V., Mal, Ahmad O. & Alpermann, Tilman J., 2019, Review of the moray eels (Anguilliformes: Muraenidae) of the Red Sea, with description of a new species, Zootaxa 4704 (1), pp. 1-87 : 55-57

Gymnothorax reticularis Bloch 1795 —Reticulate Moray

( Figure 36 )

Gymnothorax reticularis Bloch 1795: 85 , pl. 416 (Coromandel coast, India). Holotype (unique), ZMB 3986.— Randall & Golani 1995: 867; Golani & Bogorodsky 2010: 10; Bogorodsky et al. 2014: 411 ; Golani & Fricke 2018: 23.

Muraena reticulata: Rüppell 1830: 117 .

Red Sea material. Israel: HUJ 14667 (1, 240), Eilat . Saudi Arabia: KAUMM 415 [ KAU14-155 ] (1, 400), Jizan, 60–65 m, 01 Nov 2014 ; SMF 34964 [ KAU12-733 ] (1, 350), Jizan, 55–60 m, 29 Feb 2012 .

Comparative material. Mozambique: SAIAB 5052 (1, 346) . Pakistan: USNM 427632 (1, 297) . India: ZMB 3986 (1, 302, holotype) , Coromandel (Tranquebar); ANSP 127987 (3, 207–256) ; USNM 343723 (1, 200) . Myanmar: USNM 438261 (1, 271).

Description. In TL: preanal length 2.0–2.2, predorsal length 7.1–11, head length 6.5–8.2, body depth at anus 19–29. In head length: snout length 5.2–7.8, eye diameter 8.1–13, upper-jaw length 2.9–3.5. Pores: LL 2, SO 3, IO 4, POM 6. Vertebrae: predorsal 5–7, preanal 48–53, total 115–126.

Body moderately elongate; anus at or slightly before midlength; dorsal-fin origin before gill opening. Snout moderately short, jaws of equal length. Eye moderate, over middle of upper jaw. Anterior nostril tubular; posterior nostril above anterior part of eye.

Teeth uniserial, conical to triangular, pointed, serrate. Intermaxillary teeth in a single peripheral series, 3–6 on each side; no median teeth. Maxillary teeth uniserial, 3–11. Dentary teeth uniserial except 1 specimen with 2 inner teeth on one side, 7–15. Vomerine teeth small and inconspicuous, uniserial but biserial in 1 specimen, about 6–12.

Color: body pale gray with yellowish hue dorsally, with 16–20 dark brown bars on ventral two-thirds of body, narrower than pale interspace, obscured dorsally by numerous, irregular, small spots, some forming a reticular pattern. Dorsal and anal fins alternating with black and white or pale gray, spots on body extending onto white interspaces basally in fins. Head pale gray with dark brown spots of variable size that are longitudinally elongate posteriorly.

Maximum size about 460 mm (specimen from the Mediterranean Sea).

Distribution and habitat. Known from India, Pakistan, Mozambique, and the Red Sea. Both Red Sea specimens trawled off Jizan from soft substrata, from a depth of 50– 65 m. Reported also from the eastern Mediterranean Sea by Stern & Goren (2013).

Remarks. This species was long confused with Gymnothorax minor . The true Gymnothorax reticularis is restricted to the Indian Ocean; records from the Pacific refer to G. minor ( Smith & Böhlke 1997) . Specimens from the Red Sea have more preanal (51–53) and total (123–126) vertebrae than those from elsewhere (48–50 and 115–122). The Mozambique specimen is intermediate with 122 vertebrae vs. ca 115–120 in those from India and Pakistan.Also in the Red Sea specimens, the bars are less distinct dorsally, where they tend to be lost in the general spotting. We have no genetic data from outside the Red Sea. Smith & Böhlke (1997: 187) reported that the specimen described by J.L.B. Smith (1962: 429) from Mozambique could not be located. However, the first author found it during his visit to South Africa in 2001 and took the relevant counts and measurements. Li et al. (2018) demonstrated that previous records of specimens identified as G. reticularis in the western Pacific are based on misidentification of G. minor . No COI sequences were available for G. reticularis from outside the Red Sea. Sequences of the mitochondrial COI from two Red Sea specimens that were collected during the present study were included in the multi-sequence alignment. In the resulting phylogenetic tree ( Fig. 48 ), G. reticularis did not show a close phylogenetic affiliation with any other clade of moray eels included in the analysis.

Figures

FIGURE 36. Gymnothorax reticularis, SMF 34964 [KAU12-733], 350 mm TL, fresh specimen, Jizan, Saudi Arabia. Photo by S.V. Bogorodsky.

FIGURE 48. Unrooted maximum likelihood phylogeny of Indo-Pacific moray eels (Muraenidae) based on partial mitochondrial COI. Branch support values were obtained by 100 bootstrapped replicates; only bootstrap values above 50 percent are shown. The scale bar represents average number of nucleotide substitutions. (A) = specimen sequenced in this study; (B) = sequence retrieved from BOLD; (C) sequence retrieved from CRIOBE; (G) = sequence retrieved from GenBank; (R) = sequence retrieved from Reece et al. (2010); (ID) = species ID re-assigned herein; (ID-H) = specimen re-assigned as of Huang et al. (2019); (SAU) = collected in Saudi Arabia; (ISR) = collected in Israel.