First record of the Red Sea spotted grouper , Epinephelus geoffroyi ( Klunzinger , 1870 ) ( Serranidae ) in the Mediterranean

On January 2015 a specimen of the Red Sea spotted grouper Epinephelus geoffroyi (Klunzinger, 1870) was recorded for the first time from the Mediterranean Sea. This species apparently entered the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal (Lessepsian migrant) and is the fourth Red Sea grouper found in this region.


Introduction
The influx of Red Sea organism into the Mediterranean, following the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 is an ongoing process showing no cessation.It was termed "Lessepsian migration" in honor of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the enterprising engineer of the Canal.Lessepsian migration encompasses almost all marine taxa, including more than six hundred species (Zenetos 2010), with close to 90 fishes reported so far (Golani et al. 2013).

Methods
On 25 January 2015, a 391 mm SL (468 mm TL), 1947 g wet weight, specimen of Epinephelus geoffroyi (Klunzinger, 1870) (Figure 1) was speared in rocky habitat at a depth of 12 m near Ga 'ash,Israel (32º13′50″N,34º48′59″E).The specimen was deposited in the Fish Collection of the National Natural History Collections of the Hebrew University and received the catalogue number HUJ 20396.

Short description of the specimen
Body moderately elongated, its depth 2.9 times in SL.Head 2.7 times in SL.Snout moderately pointed (3.6), small eye (7.8) and wide interorbital (4.6) all times in Head length.Lower jaw slightly projected.Maxilla reaches back to the vertical of central eye.Two canine teeth in front of upper jaw with a patch of small sharp teeth behind them and an outer row of sharp teeth and inner band of small teeth.The teeth in the lower jaw similar to upper jaw but the patches behind the canine teeth are much smaller.A reversed Vshaped vomer patch with teeth.Two narrow palatine patches with small teeth.Preoperculum edge finely serrated with five large serra at the angle.Three flat spines on the posterior part of the operculum, the middle spine is the largest.Eight gill rakers on upper limb of the first arch and 17 on the lower limb (including the raker at the angle).The three rakers at the angle are the longest, their length 1.5 times the length of the gill filament.No small bony plates on the sides of the first gill The morphometric characters and colour pattern, except for the rounded anal fin (see remarks below), are very close to or agree with the description of Epinephelus geoffroyi given by Randall et al. (2013).

Remarks
Epinephelus geoffroyi is endemic to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.It inhabits rocky and coral substrate at depths 3-32 m.
This species is the fourth Red Sea grouper to be found in the Mediterranean together with: Epinephelus coioides (Hamilton, 1822) and Epinephelus malabaricus (Bloch and Schneider, 1801) reported by Heemstra and Golani (1993) and Golani (2010); and Epinephelus fasciatus (Forsskål, 1775) reported by Bariche and Heemstra (2012) on the basis of photographic documentation from Lebanon.The first two species can be distinguished from E. geoffroyi by having 4-5 wide dark bars on the body, numerous small bony plates on the sides of the first gill arch (none in E. geoffroyi) and a round caudal fin (vs.emarginate).E. fasciatus also has a round caudal fin and no spots on the body.The colour pattern distinguishes E. geoffroyi from all other Mediterranean co-familial species.E. geoffroyi was first described by Klunzinger (1870) under the generic name Serranus.Boulenger ( 1895) synonymized E. geoffroyi with E. chlorostigma (Valenciennes, 1828) and was followed by many authors (Randall and Ben-Tuvia 1983;Randall and Heemstra 1991).Randall et al. (2013) resurrected E. geoffroyi and distinguished it from E. chlorostigma by having more gill rakers 25-29 (vs 23-26), spots on the belly being more widely separated and a vertical row of spots on the caudal fin posterior margin (vs.white margin in E. chlorostigma).Therefore, they concluded that previous records of E. geoffroyi from the Red Sea were misidentified as E. chlorostigma (see: Randall and Heemstra 1991;Heemstra and Randall 1993;Golani and Bogorodsky 2010;Craig et al. 2011).The round anal fin of the Mediterranean specimen was the only character that does not match with the description of E. geoffroyi.We examined 20 specimens of E. geoffroyi from the Red Sea that were deposited in the Hebrew University Fish Collection.We found that the shape of the anal fin is variable; some specimens had pointed and others had round anal fins.Hence, it appears that the shape of the anal fin is not a stable character, decisive for the identification of this species.Finally, E. geoffroyi can be confused with the Red Sea Epinephelus areolatus (Forsskål, 1775) but this species has larger spots on the body, sub-equal to the pupil (vs.much smaller than pupil in E. geoffroyi).