Grammonus ater (Risso, 1810)

Borg, Joseph A., Evans, Julian, Knittweis, Leyla & Schembri, Patrick J., 2022, New and interesting records of marine fishes (Actinopterygii) from the Maltese Islands (central Mediterranean), Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria 52 (3), pp. 215-221 : 215

Grammonus ater (Risso, 1810)

Fig. 4

Diagnosis.

Head not strongly depressed, eyes directed mainly laterally. No sharp spines at lower angle of preopercle. Opercle triangular, posterior edge angled and pointed only at upper edge. Snout blunt. Posterior angle of jaws ending behind vertical of eye posterior margin. Body and head uniformly dark brown.

Remarks.

A single individual of this species was recorded from the SCUBA surveys at a depth of 10 m within a cave (Fig. 4 and Table 3 ). Froese and Pauly (2022) give the depth range for this species as 5-30 m and indicate that G. ater is associated with reef habitats. The present record, as well as two other local records reported in social media1, refer to this species as occurring within caves in shallow water. The occurrence of G. ater in the Maltese Islands has not been previously reported in the scientific literature. The majority of authors (e.g., Bussotti and Guidetti 2009; Bussotti et al. 2015) consider this species to be speleophilic, while Ragkousis et al. (2021) commented that it is only found in exclusively dark conditions. Froese and Pauly (2022) state that G. ater occurs in the eastern Atlantic, and from the Balearic Islands to the Adriatic in the Mediterranean. On the other hand, Ragkousis et al. (2021) note that its occurrence in the Azores Archipelago remains unconfirmed, while recent studies give records for this species from Crete and Cyprus. The distribution of G. ater , which is considered to be a Mediterranean endemic, has therefore been updated to extend from Spain to Cyprus, having been reported from 23 marine caves in Spain, France, Italy, Croatia, Greece, and Cyprus ( Ragkousis et al. 2021), and from at least one cave in Malta (Table 3 ).

Figures

Figure 4. Image grab from ROV footage collected on 20 June 2016 at a depth of 10 m (36 ° 01.106 ′ N, 014 ° 14.730 ′ E) showing an individual of Grammonus ater. Image: Enrique Talledo / OCEANA © LIFE BaĦAR for N 2 K.