Occurrence of longfin goatfish Upeneus supravittatus (Uiblein and Heemstra, 2010) along Chennai coast, south India

Abstract

Goatfishes (Family: Mullidae) are commercially important fishery resource along the Chennai coast, south-eastern India.Species-level identification of goatfishes is a challenge, particularly in the ‘vittatus’ group, as there is severe overlapof taxonomic characteristics. In 2010, Uiblein and Heemstra revised the Family Mullidae and reported the occurrenceof Upeneus supravittatus along the Indian coast. They also remarked that U. supravittatus has been misidentified asU. taeniopterus in earlier reports from India. To resolve this and verify the occurrence of U. supravittatus, 15 morphometriccharacteristics and 13 meristic characteristics of goatfish samples collected at Chennai were analysed and compared withthe corresponding data reported by Uiblein and Heemstra for U. taeniopterus and four other ‘vittatus’ group goat fishes. Theanalysis, as well as DNA bar coding and area of distribution of species confirmed the samples as Upeneus supravittatus.The gill raker count on the upper and lower limbs of first gill arch was an important key in identifying the species. Thoughthe number of gill rakers was almost similar for U. supravittatus, U. vittatus and U. taeniopterus, the size and position ofthe gill rakers confirmed that the collected samples were all U. supravittatus. The study also indicates the possibility thatU. supravittatus has been hitherto wrongly reported as U. taeniopterus. A detailed taxonomic study on the Family Mullidaeneeds to be undertaken along the Indian coast using morphometric and meristic characteristics and DNA barcoding toresolve these taxonomic issues. Keywords: DNA barcoding, Gill rakers, Species identification, ‘vittatus’ group