Gobiidae

Kovačić, Marcelo, 2020, Checklist of gobies (Teleostei: Gobiidae) of the Mediterranean Sea and a key for species identification, Zootaxa 4877 (1), pp. 75-101 : 81

Checklist of Gobiidae of the Mediterranean Sea

The checklist contains 73 presently known species of Gobiidae in the Mediterranean Sea ( Table 1 ). All species in the list have their presence verified by the criteria in Kovačić et al. (2020) i.e. by at least one specimen from the Mediterranean stored in a public collection or by a diagnosis that positively identifies the species from the photo or from the description in a publication ( Table 1 ). Two species were described apparently based on Mediterranean material with type material lost and no published evidence of other Mediterranean material in public collection, so the diagnostic characters in the original description are the only evidence ( Table 1 ). All other records, except Cryptocentrus caeruleopunctatus (Rüppell 1830) and Aulopareia unicolor (Valenciennes, 1837) , were confirmed in the Mediterranean by at least one specimen from the Mediterranean stored in public collection having the related published reference. The Mediterranean record of C. caeruleopunctatus was verified by the diagnosis that positively identify species from the photo. Two more records of alien gobies in the Mediterranean Sea are problematic as they lack diagnostic characters for positive identification in the described morphology in their first record publications: A. unicolor in Akel & Samir (2017) and Bathygobius cyclopterus (Cuvier & Valenciennes, 1837) in Akel (2017) . However, the identity of A. unicolor was verified by Helen Larson (personal communication) using the diagnosis that positively identified the species from the published photo in Akel & Samir (2017), and it is therefore included in the checklist. Bathygobius cyclopterus has been rejected from the present checklist because its identity and provenance could not be verified. Proterorhinus marmoratus (Pallas 1814) , listed as a Mediterranean species in Kovačić & Patzner (2011), was also excluded from the present list since all references to the presence of P. marmoratus in the marine conditions of the northeast Mediterranean areas (summarised in Papaconstantinou 2014) are without original data, and none of them satisfies any of the criteria for the verified presence ( Kovačić et al. 2020).