Gobius gasteveni Miller, 1974

Kovačić, Marcelo, Renoult, Julien P., Pillon, Roberto, Svensen, Rudolf, Bogorodsky, Sergey V., Engin, Semih & Louisy, Patrick, 2022, Identification of Mediterranean marine gobies (Actinopterygii: Gobiidae) of the continental shelf from photographs of in situ individuals, Zootaxa 5144 (1), pp. 1-103 : 56

Gobius gasteveni Miller, 1974 ( Fig. 54 )—Steven’s Goby

Gobius gasteveni Miller, 1974: 468 , type locality: England, English Channel , Plymouth.

Size. Known adult size about 10–12 cm total length.

Morphology. D V–VI + I,12–15; A I,11–14; P 18–22. Medium-sized goby with a moderately long body, and a short snout with a steep profile. Caudal peduncle deep, but lower than body. Dorsal fins of similar height, the first may be slightly higher, with a more or less trapezoid shape, its first spine no shorter than the others. Caudal fin rounded. Scales present on body and on predorsal area, usually visible on photographs at least on body (Miller 1974, 1986).

Live coloration. Body light gray to light pink with gold and greenish reflections on the back. Lateral midline with 6 to 11 rectangular, orange to dark brown blotches, some of them usually separated by isolated dark dots surrounded with white ( Fig. 54 ). Lips white, or light gray or gold with white spots. Snout with a well-defined V-shaped line. Cheeks pale or shaded, and then often with a gold sheen and round white spots. An oculoscapular orange stripe starts behind eye and continues above upper pectoral-fin base into an irregular dorsolateral body stripe until top of caudal peduncle ( Fig. 54a ). Dorsal fins with white spots and white margin in some males, possibly only in Atlantic population. Breeding males dark ( Fig. 54b ) ( Alberto et al. 1999; Renoult et al. 2022).

Similar species. Gobius roulei , G. geniporus .

Habitat. Infralittoral and circalittoral species, known from 5–120 m depth on soft bottoms with mud, sand, silt, shell or small-stone deposits (Miller 1986; Patzner 2021).

Geographic distribution. Eastern Atlantic from Great Britain (Miller 1974) to Madeira and Canary Islands ( Miller 1984) and in the western Mediterranean: Alboran and Balearic Islands ( Ahnelt & Dorda 2004), southern France (J. Renoult unpublished observation), Gulf of Genoa in Italy ( Ahnelt et al. 2011), Malta ( Kovačić & Schembri 2019) and Lebanon ( Bitar & Badreddine 2021).

Figures

FIGURE 54. Live coloration in its natural habitat of Gobius gasteveni. A) common coloration, photo by B. Guichard, Brest, northwestern France. B) dark coloration, photo by L.S. Tocino, Granada, Southern Spain.