A NEW RECORD OF SEBASTISCUS TERTIUS (SCORPAENOIDEI: SEBASTIDAE) IN CHINESE MAINLAND COASTAL WATERS IN MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERS AND DNA BARCODING

Abstract

A rockfish species Sebastiscus tertius (Barsukov and Chen, 1978) was recorded from coastal waters of Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province, China, based on 19 specimens with 167.1—254.3mm in standard length. This species was distinct from other rockfishes in the following combination of characters: dorsal-fin rays VII, 12, anal-fin rays Ⅲ, 5, pectoral-fin rays 18—19; Gill rakers on first gill arch 6—7+13—17; 5 spines in the anterior operculum and 2 spines in the posterior edge of the operculum; 1 spine in the posterior horn of the anterior orbital bone; an obvious black spot on the pectoral fin. This species is the third Sebastiscus species recorded from China. The 12S rRNA gene fragments and cytochrome oxidase I subunit (COI) gene fragments were determined and the homologous sequences of S. tertius and in GenBank were analyzed. Results showed that the sequences of 12S rRNA were all identical with the homologous sequences of S. tertius from NCBI and could be used as the DNA barcode. The result of COI suggested that all individuals could be clearly divided into two branches with a genetic distance of 0.044, indicating that the two branches might be different effective species. In addition, combined with the homologous sequences analysis of S. marmoratus in GenBank, we found that the homologous sequences of S. tertius clustered into the same branch. We speculated that the sequences labeled as S. tertius are actually the sequences of S. marmoratus .