A lag of 44 years: presence of Epinephelus lanceolatus (Actinopterygii: Perciformes: Epinephelidae) from the Persian Gulf

Azhar Al-Saboonchi,Laith Jawad,Hassan salim,Adil Kassim

doi:10.3750/aiep/02539

Abstract

An old stuffed specimen of the giant grouper, Epinephelus lanceolatus (Bloch, 1790) (2000 mm TL), was recovered during the relocation of the artefacts of the Basrah Natural History Museum, University of Basrah, Iraq recently. The specimen was collected 44 years ago in 1974 by a gillnet in the Shatt al-Arab Estuary, Basrah, Iraq. So far, this species is known to have no records from the Persian Gulf area. The present report is important in recording E. lanceolatus from the estuary of the Shatt al-Arab River and is considered new for both the Iraqi and the Persian Gulf waters. Our finding brings to light an amazing example of invasion lag.

Highlights

Epinephelus lanceolatus (Bloch, 1790) is a marineA lag phase is not an unusual phenomenon in invasion and brackish water species living in association with biology (Heger and Trepl 2003, Binggeli 2001)
Detection of the invading species at the time in the photo section of the page of this species in the of the entry into the new environment has happened only FishBase (Froese and Pauly 2019), there is one photo of in a limited number of cases (Crooks 2005), but in most this species has been collected from Iranian waters, but no cases some time will lapse between the initial invasion mention was given about its locality
Subsequent discovery of the invader, as there is a The aims of the presently reported study are: (1) to strong bias for spotting invaders only after they become record for the first time the giant grouper from both the well distributed irritants (Crooks and Soulé 1999). These Shatt al-Arab Estuary, Basrah, Iraq and the Persian Gulf; lags in detection are critical as they affect the ability to (2) to unveil the presence of an old specimen which has estimate the prevalence of other types of lags