Sillago suezensis, a new whiting from the northern Red Sea, and status of Sillago erythraea Cuvier (Teleostei: Sillaginidae)

Abstract

The status of Sillago erythraea Cuvier in Cuvier and Valenciennes 1829 is re-examined. A lectotype designation by McKay in 1985 fixes it as a junior synonym of Sillago sihama (Forsskål in Niebuhr, 1775), which is restricted to the southern Red Sea. Northern Red Sea populations previously assigned to S. sihama or S. erythraea, are here described as Sillago suezensis sp. nov. Sillago suezensis is also distributed in the eastern Mediterranean Sea due to Lessepsian immigration through the Suez Canal. The new species is characterized within the Sillago sihama group, which has the swimbladder divided posteriorly into two tapering extensions projecting below the vertebral column extending into the tail musculature, by the absence of scales on the preopercle and on most of the opercle, a total number of 34 vertebrae, the swimbladder with lateral extensions each spreading a blind tubule anterolaterally, and a low position of the nostril.

http://www.zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:B289CDF4-AE82-44D3-9AE1-4A2B514AD348

Keywords:

• Ichthyology
• systematics
• Red Sea
• Mediterranean Sea
• Lessepsian migrant
• Sillago
• new species

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr Maurice Kottelat (Cornol, Switzerland) for drawing our attention to the lectotype designation for S. sihama, Dr B. Sapir (Jerusalem) and Dr I. Tsur (Jerusalem) for the X-rays, Dr Patrice Pruvost and Romain Causse (MNHN) for the loan of the type material of S. erythraea, as well as Dr Tilman Alpermann (SMF) and Dr Jeffrey T. Williams (USNM) for providing catalogue numbers. We are grateful to Dr D. Darom (Jerusalem) for photographs, and to T. Kurz (Tel Aviv) for the drawings. Thanks are extended to Sergey Bogorodsky (Omsk) who provided a live colour photograph of S. suezensis, and to two anonymous reviewers for useful comments.