Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria 50(4): 489-492, doi: 10.3750/AIEP/03057
First record of Paranthias cf. furcifer (Actinopterygii: Perciformes: Serranidae) from the central Mediterranean, with notes on the identification of marine species from imagery
J. Evans, J.A. Borg, P.J. SchembriCorresponding author: J. Evans © J. Evans, J.A. Borg, P.J. Schembri. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Citation:
Evans J, Borg J, Schembri P (2020) First record of Paranthias cf. furcifer (Actinopterygii: Perciformes: Serranidae) from the central Mediterranean, with notes on the identification of marine species from imagery. Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria 50(4): 489-492. https://doi.org/10.3750/AIEP/03057 |  |
Abstract
An individual fish, identified as a species of Paranthias, is recorded from a photograph taken in July 2013 at Marsascala, Malta. The species is likely to be P. furcifer but since no actual specimen has been forthcoming in spite of a long time since this record, and as certain identification is based on meristic counts, the fish is only conclusively identified to the genus level. Nonetheless, this is the first record of this genus from the central Mediterranean. The problems of identification based on images alone are discussed and it is recommended that publications based on such identifications should include a critical analysis of the uncertainties in the identification and of alternative identifications.
Keywords
alien species, Epinephelinae, Malta, non-indigenous species, Serranidae