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International Journal of Marine Science 2014, Vol.4, No.32: 1-3
http://ijms.biopublisher.ca
1
A Letter Open Access
New Record of
Neobythites steatiticus
Alcock, 1894 (Actinopterygii: Ophidiidae)
from the Marine Waters of Iraq
Laith A. Jawad
1
, Mustafa A. Al-Mukhtar
2
, Abbas J. Al-Faisal
2
, Tariq Hammed
2
1. Manukau, Auckland, New Zealand
2. Marine Science Centre, University of Basrah, Basrah, Iraq
Corresponding author email
International Journal of Marine Science, 2014, Vol.4, No.32 doi: 10.5376/ijms.2014.04.0032
Received: 19 Feb, 2014
Accepted: 13 May, 2014
Published: 29 Jul., 2014
Copyright
©
2014
Jawad et al, This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted
use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Preferred citation for this article:
Jawad et al., 2014, New Record of
Neobythites steatiticus
Alcock, 1894 (Actinopterygii: Ophidiidae) from the Marine Waters of Iraq, International Journal of
Marine Science, Vol.4, No.32: 1-3 (doi: 10.5376/ijms.2014.04.0032)
Abstract
The first record of
Neobythites steatiticus
in the Iraqi waters of the Arabian Gulf is reported based on a single specimen
370 mm in total length, obtained from south of Faw City Peninsula, Basrah, Iraq, Arabian Gulf. This account represents the
northernmost range extension of this species in the north of the Indian Ocean region. The specimen is larger than the type specimen
of the species and larger than other specimen obtained from other locations and it is considered a record size for this species.
Keywords
New record; Range extension; Ophidiidae; Basrah; Arabian Gulf
Introduction
The family Ophidiidae comprises 261 valid species,
into four sub-families with
Neobythitinae
being the
largest with 185 valid species (Eschmeyer and Fong,
2014). This species,
Neobythites steatiticus
, (Alcock,
1894) is present in the Indian Ocean from the Persian
Gulf to the Bay of Bengal (Froese and Pauly, 2014). In
spite of the several publication that appeared on the
marine fish fauna of Iraq during the last few decades
(Khalaf 1961; Mahdi 1971; Al-Daham 1982;
Al-Hassan and Al-Badri 1986; Al-Hassan and Miller
1987; Hussain et al. 1988), the marine ichthyofauna is
still far from being fully known and documented: a
considerable amount of taxonomic work is waiting to
be done (Jawad 2012). Low fishing sampling effort
along the continental slope in the Arabian Sea and the
Gulfs might be the reason for the lack of information
on the deep-water fish communities in the Arabian
Gulf (Nielsen, 2002).
Recently, several programs have been started to survey
the Iraqi waters of the Arabian Gulf in order to study
the fish biodiversity of this area and aiming to build
up a list of species that present in the northwest part of
the Arabian Gulf. The
Neobythites steatiticus
was first
described by Alcock in 1894 from Bay of Bengal.
Since then it has been reported from different
localities within the Indian Ocean (Nielsen et al., 1999;
Nielsen, 2002; Uiblein and Nielsen, 2005; Eschmeyer
and Fong, 2014).
This study reports the occurrence of
N. steatiticus
in
the Arabian Gulf coasts of Iraq. This species is rare,
but it is known from the Arabian Gulf area (Nielsen,
2002; Uiblein and Nielsen, 2005) and the present
record represents the first record to the Iraqi marine
waters.
1 Materials and Methods
The
Neobythites steatiticus
specimen was caught on
4th February 2014, near the southern coast of Faw
City Peninsula, Iraq, Arabian Gulf (latitude: 29˚49
ˊ
46.01
″
N; longitude: 48˚45
ˊ
53.17
″
E) by fishermen
using 240 × 10 m drifting gill nets of 35 × 35 mm
mesh size. This specimen was measured by the second
author with dial callipers to the nearest 0.1 mm at the
collection site right after collection. The morphometric
and meristic details were recorded according to
Nielsen et al. (1999). The body proportions are taken
as follows: Total length (TL), from the anterior tip of
the head to the posterior tip of the tail; standard length
(SL), from the anterior tip of the head to the end of the
vertebral column which is situated just at the base of
the caudal fin; head length (HL), from the anterior tip
of the head to the posterior edge of the operculum;
orbital diameter (OD), the horizontal length across the
orbit; predorsal length (Pre D), from the anterior tip of