New Geographical Record for Muraenid Eels (Anguilliformes: Muraenidae) along the Northeast Arabian Sea, Western Indian O
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New Geographical Record for Muraenid Eels (Anguilliformes: Muraenidae) along the Northeast Arabian Sea, Western Indian Ocean Rajan Kumar 1 & A. P. Dineshbabu 1 & Ashok Kumar Jaiswar 2 & Latha Shenoy 2 & Annam Pavan Kumar 2 Shikha Rahangdale 1 & Vinay Kumar Vase 1 & Divu Damodar 1 & Sangita Bharadiya 1 & Jayshree Gohel 1
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Received: 21 October 2019 / Revised: 1 May 2020 / # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Fishes of family Muraenidae, popularly known as moray eels, are one of the most diverse groups among true eels. Gymnothorax is the most predominant genus in terms of diversity along Indian coastline (31 species including recent description and distributional records), but they rarely form the fishery of commercial importance. Gymnothorax dorsalis, species of elongated unpatterned moray eels characterized by eight to nine pre-dorsal vertebrae, three infraorbital pores and low dorsal and anal fin united with caudal fins is reported for the first time from the west coast of India. Gymnothorax reticularis, reticulated patterned eel with 18–19 vertical dark bars, five pre-dorsal vertebrae and 10–11 vomerine teeth is also reported for the first time from the northwest coast of India. Keywords North east Arabian Sea . Gujarat . Muraenidae . Trawl . Bycatch
Introduction Muraenids eels, popularly known as moray eels, are one of the most diverse families of true eels (order: Anguilliformes). They are known for their wide distribution across tropical and subtropical marine ecosystems (Smith 2012). Moray eels are characterized by scale-less elongated bodies, with the absence of pectoral and pelvic fins and obvious pores in the head region. Species in the family display wide variation in colour and pattern (Castle and McCosker 1986). The family Muraenidae comprises of two subfamilies viz. Uroterygiinae, characterized by dorsal and anal fin restricted in the tail region and Muraeninae, having longer dorsal and anal fins. Globally, Muraenidae is represented by 16 genera and 202 species, out of which, 35 species across 8 genera are Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s41208-020-00215-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Rajan Kumar [email protected] 1
Indian Council of Agricultural Research-Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Kochi 682018, India
2
Indian Council of Agricultural Research-Central Institute of Fisheries Education, Mumbai 400061, India
also reported from Indian waters (Froese and Pauly 2019). Genus Gymnothorax accounts for nearly half of the total number of moray eel species and is considered a polyphyletic assemblage among moray eels (Smith 2012). There are 24 valid species under genus Gymnothorax reported from Indian waters (Froese and Pauly 2019). In addition, several new species have been described under the genus, from the east coast of India in recent years viz. Gymnothorax mishrai (Ray et al. 2015), G. indicus (Mohapatra et al. 2016), G. odishi (Mohapatra et al. 2018), G. andama
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