Bregmaceros nectabanus Whitley, 1941

Bogorodsky, Sergey V., Alpermann, Tilman J., Mal, Ahmad O. & Gabr, Mohamed H., 2014, Survey of demersal fishes from southern Saudi Arabia, with five new records for the Red Sea, Zootaxa 3852 (4), pp. 401-437 : 414

Bregmaceros nectabanus Whitley, 1941

( Fig. 4 )

Material examined. SMF 34987 (3: 6.0– 7.8 cm); KAUMM 35 (3: 5.4–5.7 cm).

Remarks. The specimens trawled off Jizan provisionally belong to Bregmaceros nectabanus on the basis of combination of the following characters: second dorsal-fin rays 46–51; anal-fin rays 49–53; longitudinal scale series 68–73. Kotthaus (1967) first recorded the species from the southern Red Sea. Antony S. Harold kindly examined material and noted some differences between Red Sea specimens and B. nectabanus , presently known from Indo-western Pacific. Bregmaceros arabicus D’Ancona & Cavinato, 1965 , is another species reported from the Red Sea ( Aron & Goodyear 1969), characterized by a high number of rays in second dorsal fin, 50–60 (usually 52–54) vs. 42–55 (usually 47–50) in B. nectabanus , and in anal fin, 50–63 (usually 56 or 57) vs. 43–55 (usually 50–52) in B. nectabanus . Also B. arabicus has 50–53 vertebrae vs. 47–50 in B. nectabanus . Belyanina (1974) noticed that the number of longitudinal scale series can help to distinguish the species, however Belyanina (1974) and D’Ancona & Cavinato (1965) reported different counts of scale series, 70–79 and 78–89, respectively; 65–75 scale series known for B. nectabanus . Future study is needed to determine whether the Red Sea population represents an undescribed species or if they belong to the widespread B. nectabanus . Color of fresh specimen is shown in Figure 4 . Six trawled specimens were collected from a depth of 55 m.

Figures

FIGURE 4. Bregmaceros nectabanus, SMF 34987, 7.2 cm SL, Jizan, Saudi Arabia.