Sparidae Rafinesque, 1810

Family Sparidae Rafinesque, 1810 View in CoL View at ENA

Remarks Te Sparidae represent the family with the largest diversity in Dar bel Hamri with 15 species. Te distinction of the otoliths of the many species often depends on rather subtle traits such as proportions of the otolith or the sulcus, curvature of inner and outer face, details of the otolith outline particularly of the dorsal rim and curvature of the caudal tip. Many small or poorly preserved specimens in the collection from Dar bel Hamri cannot be identified to species level and therefore are omitted from the description. Fortunately, many large and well preserved sparid otoliths exist as well from Dar bel Hamri and allow recognition of taxa. Te allocation of the otoliths to genera of the Sparidae is also a delicate task and often depends on direct comparison with extant species since no useful traits have been identified for a definition of genera by means of otoliths. Some genera contain rather different otolith morphological patterns, for instance Pagellus or Dentex . In the case of Dentex , the highly diverse otolith patterns strongly support the separation of the formal genus in independant clades as depicted in Chiba et al. (2009) and Santini et al. (2014). However, a character analysis of sparid otoliths has not yet been done, but see also comment to Dentex .