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.