International Journal of Marine Science 2016, Vol.6, No.52, 1-5
1
Research Report Open Access
Day’s Goby,
Acentrogobius dayi
Koumans, 1941 (Pisces: Gobiidae) in the
Southern Marshes, Thiqar, Southwest Baghdad, Iraq
Laith A. Jawad
1
,
, Noori A. Nasir
2
, Abbas J. Al-Faisal
2
, Qasim M. Sultan
3
, Mahmood S. Mahlhal
3
1 Flat Bush, Manukau, Auckland, New Zealand
2 Marine Science Centre, University of Basrah, Basrah, Iraq
3 Agricultural Directorate, Thiqar, Iraq
Corresponding author email
International Journal of Marine Science 2016, Vol.6, No.52 doi
Received: 07 Nov., 2016
Accepted: 12 Dec., 2016
Published: 13 Dec., 2016
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 L.A., Nasir N.A., Al-Faisal A.J., Sultan Q.M. and Mahlhal M.S., 2016, Day’s Goby,
Acentrogobius dayi
Koumans, 1941 (Pisces: Gobiidae) in the
Southern Marshes, Thiqar, Southwest Baghdad, Iraq, International Journal of Marine Science, 6(52): 1-5 (doi
Abstract
The Day’s goby,
Acentrogobius dayi
(one specimen) was obtained from a marsh near Al-Fuhud Village, south-west of
Baghdad, Iraq. The presence of this species in the new habitat is considered a new record for Day’s goby in the southern marshes of
Iraq. Possibilities for such presence were presented.
Keywords
Range extension; New record; Gobiidae; Freshwater; Marshes; Invasion
Introduction
The southern marsh area of Iraq is a huge aquatic habitat and is considered the centre of flourishing for all sorts of
creatures including human being for the last 8,000 years (Heyvaert and Baeteman,
2008
). These wetlands have
confronted an intentional devastation by Sadam regime during the 1990s and the significant decrease of the
natural wetland resources as a result of diverting Euphrates River so it will not feed the marsh area (
Maltby, 1994;
Partow, 2001
). In 2003, the marsh area was re-flooded by the locals in order to let the water onto the past status
(Richardson et al.,
2005
).
Mesopotamia or the land between two rivers is located north-east of the Arabian Peninsula at the edge of Zagros
Mountains (Guest and Al-Rawi,
1966
). It is included in the Saharo-Arabian region (Zohary,
1973).
The location of
the marshes in the lower reaches of the Tigris-Euphrates Rivers (30.5°to 32.5°N, 44°to 48°E). The marshes of
Iraq fall into three parts according to its geographic position. Hammar Marshes are the marshes that found
south
of the Euphrates River, while Huwaiza Marshes are located to the east of the Tigris River. The Central marshes are
those wetlands that lie between the two rivers.
Among the largest families in Teleosts fishes is the Family Gobiidae. There are 1763 valid species belonging to
170 genera (Eschmeyer and Fong, 2015). The members of this family are distributed in different habitats around
the world (Thacker and Roje, 2011). The genus
Acentrogobius
contains five species:
Acentrogobius
:
Acentrogobius viridipunctatus
,
Acentrogobius dayi
,
Acentrogobius decaryi
,
Acentrogobius simplex
and
Acentrogobius therezieni
(Larson and Wright, 2003).
The presence of
A. dayi
in the new habitat, marshes of southern Iraq, is reported in this study. Previously, this
species has been recorded from Sawa Lake, south west of Baghdad (Ziyadi et al., 2015). Therefore, the present
record is the 2
nd
in the inland waters of Iraq.
1 Material and Methods
On 7th June 2016, one specimen of day’s goby
A. dayi
(108 mm, TL) was collected from the southern marshes of
Iraq near Al-Fuhud Village, Thiqar, Iraq (Figure 1) (
30° 58′ 54.31″ N, 46° 46′ 35.18″ E)
(Figure 2). Fish specimen
was collected using cast net. Morphometric and meristic details were recorded and data are presented in Table 1.
