Epinephelus epistictus (Temminck & Schlegel, 1842)

Ray, Dipanjan, Roy, Sanmitra & Mohapatra, Anil, 2023, First occurrence report of three rare Serranid fishes from northern part of east coast of India and a new record from West Bengal coast, India, Species (e 10 s 1010) 24 (73), pp. 1-8 : 4-5

publication ID	https://doi.org/10.54905/disssi/v24i73/e10s1010
persistent identifier	https://treatment.plazi.org/id/BA145B33-0B48-FF8E-843A-F9CC372A5C84
treatment provided by	Felipe
scientific name	Epinephelus epistictus (Temminck & Schlegel, 1842)
status

Treatment

Epinephelus epistictus (Temminck & Schlegel, 1842) View in CoL

Dotted grouper

Material examined

EBRC /ZSI/F 13091, 01 ex., 87.6 mm SL, Petuaghat fish landing centre, Purba Medinipur, West Bengal, Ray and party, 22/x/2019 .

Diagnostic characters

D: XII+13; A: III+8; P: 18; V: I+5; C: 19 GR: 22; LL: 65. Medium sized fish with stout and moderately compressed body. Dorsal profile of head and interorbital space convex. Preopercle with 3 enlarge serrae; upper edge of opercle straight; maxilla reaches almost vertical at the end of the eye. Mouth oblique, lower jaw slightly larger than upper jaw; mid side of lower jaw with two rows of teeth. Pelvic fin not reach up to the anus, caudal fin rounded ( Figure 3 View Figure 3 ).

Colour

Body light brown (whitish after preservation) with three rows of dark spots on body starting from posterior orbital margin

Distribution

Red Sea; Indo-West Pacific: East Africa, South Africa, Comoros, Madagascar and Persian Gulf east to Philippines and New Guinea, north to Korea, southern Sea of Japan, Ogasawara Islands ( Japan) and Australia ( Froese and Pauly, 2022). From Indian coast this species is reported from Andaman and Nicobar Island (Rajan, 2015; Rajan et al., 2017), Andhra Pradesh ( Kandula et al., 2015), Kerala ( Fischer and Bianchi, 1984; Bineesh et al., 2014; Basheer et al., 2017). Present paper reports this species first time from West Bengal coast as well as Northern part of east coast India.

Comments

This species closely resembles Epinephelus magniscuttis Postel, Fourmanoir & Guézé, 1963 . However, E. epistictus is clearly differentiated from E. magniscuttis in having fewer and smaller dark spots on head and body, further, juveniles of E. epistictus having dark spots arranged in three longitudinal rows on body ( Heemstra and Randall, 1993).