Serranus cabrilla ( Linnaeus, 1758 )

Sithole, Yonela, Heemstra, Elaine & Mwale, Monica, 2021, Revalidation and redescription of Serranus knysnaensis Gilchrist, 1904 (Perciformes: Serranidae) with a new distribution record, Zootaxa 5057 (1), pp. 99-113 : 107-108

Serranus cabrilla ( Linnaeus, 1758)

English name: Comber

Figures 3–4 ; Tables 1–5

Perca cabrilla: Linnaeus 1758: 294 (no locality given [Mediterranean Sea]).

Paracentropristis cabrilla: Fowler 1936: 1291

Serranus cabrilla: Poll 1954:69−72 , Fig. 19 ( Gabon to s. Angola); Robins and Starck 1961: 261−262 (figs. 1a, 7c, 8a, 8c; + Spain and Italy); Smith & Smith 1966: 88 (in part, not painting; Atlantic species from Mediterranean southwards, colonising South Africa to Natal); Heemstra & Randall 1986: 536 (in part, not Figure or Plate; Mediterranean, eastern Atlantic, English Channel to South Africa, and round coast to Durban).

Diagnosis. Dorsal-fin X, 13–14; pectoral-fin rays 14–16; gill rakers 7–8+14–16 (22–24 total); circumpeduncular scales 34–38; lateral-line scales 70–77; scales from dorsal fin to lateral line 9–12; scales from the anal-fin origin to lateral line 22–25. Caudal fin emarginate to slightly forked; cheek, nape, opercle, pectoral-fin base and chest scaly.

Description. Body elongate and slightly compressed; body depth less than head length, about 3.4–5.2 in SL; head length 2.6–2.8 in SL. Maxilla extending to below middle of the eye; lower jaw projecting beyond upper jaw; opercle with three flat spines, upper two spines well developed. Snout length greater than eye diameter, snout length 8.8–11.4 in SL, eye diameter 10.0– 13.9 in SL. Snout, interorbital and maxilla naked. Small scales present at bases of dorsal, anal and pectoral fins; caudal and pelvic fins with or without some small scales basally. Preopercle margin coarsely serrate with developed spines near angle. Premaxillary teeth in several irregular rows, outer teeth enlarged, with large canines anteriorly. Vomer more or less V-shaped, with small teeth. Palatines with patch of small teeth.

The first two dorsal-fin spines shortest, the sixth spine usually longest. No distinct notch between dorsal spines and soft rays but soft rays slightly elevated. Pectoral-fin origin slightly behind pelvic-fin origin, distal tip of pectoral fin reaching anus, slightly behind anal-fin origin.

Fresh Color ( Fig. 4 ). Body light brown to reddish with eight or nine dark vertical bars dorsolaterally; two or three white horizontal bands from head to tail; ventral part of head and belly mostly white; head with two or three orange-brownish stripes below and behind eye; caudal and soft dorsal fins with small bluish dots; tips of caudal fin reddish or dark brown; pelvic and pectoral fins pale. Juveniles with white midlateral stripe bordered by two thick black stripes, the upper stripe running from tip of snout through middle of eye to upper margin of operculum onto trunk above midlateral line to upper half of caudal peduncle, the lower stripe from base of pectoral fin to lower half of caudal peduncle; the dark stripes often partially broken into dark blotches ( Iwamoto & Wirtz 2018; no juvenile specimens available for examination).

Color in preservation. Specimens lose all color in preservation.

Distribution. From the British Isles to Angola, including Azores, Madeira, Canary Islands, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Cape Verde Islands, also through Mediterranean and Black Sea, and in the Red Sea ( Heemstra & Anderson 2016; Iwamoto & Wirtz 2018).

Figures

FIGURE 3. A maximum likelihood tree based on 92 COI mtDNA sequences (597 bp) of 17 Serranus species based on the General Time Reversible model. All sequences were downloaded from BOLD and GenBank (Table 1). The bottom scale bar represents branch lengths measured in the number of substitutions per site. Study species clusters are also highlighted: Serranus cabrilla (SC), S. knysnaensis (SK) and S. novemcinctus (SN).

FIGURE 4. Serranus cabrilla, 95 mm SL from Gulf of Suez, Egypt, photograph by John E. Randall.