Mycteroperca, Gill, 1862

Ma, Ka Yan & Craig, Matthew T., 2018, An Inconvenient Monophyly: An Update on the Taxonomy of the Groupers (Epinephelidae), Copeia 106 (3), pp. 443-456 : 451

Mycteroperca .

—Morphologically, the genus Mycteroperca appears to be closely related to Epinephelus , as they both have 10 or 11 dorsal-fin spines and lack trisegmental pterygiophores in the dorsal and anal fins, as well as the knob at the lower corner of maxilla (Heemstra and Randall, 1993). In past treatments, Mycteroperca has primarily been distinguished from Epinephelus by its greater number of anal-fin rays (10–13 in Mycteroperca and 7–10 in Epinephelus ), its body depth at dorsal-fin origin not more than depth at anus, and in its caudal-fin shape (truncate, emarginate, or distinctly concave in Mycteroperca versus generally round and rarely truncate in Epinephelus ). Consistent with previous studies (Craig and Hastings, 2007; Zhuang et al., 2013; Ma et al., 2016), several species of Epinephelus were nested within the clade containing Mycteroperca , including E. albomarginatus , E. andersoni , E. caninus , E. costae , E. epistictus , E. goreensis , E. heniochus , E. marginatus , E. morrhua , E. poecilonotus , E. posteli , and E. radiatus (Clade D, Figs. 1 , 2 ). With the exception of M. rubra , all other species of Mycteroperca form the monophyletic crown group to the entire clade (Clade D, Figs. 1 , 2 ). Although the species of Epinephelus within this clade have 8–9 anal-fin rays and a rounded caudal fin, several ( E. andersoni , E. goreensis , E. posteli ) share the characteristic evenness of body depth typical of Mycteroperca . Although morphological synapomorphies have yet to be found, all molecular data provide strong support for the monophyly of this clade of groupers, and hence it seems most prudent to include the 11 species of Epinephelus in Mycteroperca (the type species for Epinephelus being recovered within clade F, thus the monophyletic clade E þ F retains the generic name).

Figures

FIG. 1. Majority rule consensus cladogram of maximum likelihood analysis, reconstructed using RAxML with 1000 bootstrap replicates following Ma et al. (2016). Numbers at nodes represent bootstrap support values (%).

FIG. 2. Bayesian inference phylogram reconstructed using MrBayes following Ma et al. (2016). Numbers on branches represent posterior probabilities.