Gymnothorax randalli Smith & Böhlke 1997

Smith, David G., Bogorodsky, Sergey V., Mal, Ahmad O. & Alpermann, Tilman J., 2019, Review of the moray eels (Anguilliformes: Muraenidae) of the Red Sea, with description of a new species, Zootaxa 4704 (1), pp. 1-87 : 54-55

Gymnothorax randalli Smith & Böhlke 1997 —Randall’s Moray

( Figure 35 )

Gymnothorax punctatofasciatus (non Bleeker): Randall & Golani, 1995: 865.

Gymnothorax randalli Smith & Böhlke 1997: 185 , figs. 1, 2, 8 (Sorongjunkong, Lombok, Indonesia). Holotype, BPBM 30138. — Golani & Bogorodsky 2010: 10; Bogorodsky et al. 2014: 411 ; Golani & Fricke 2018: 22.

Red Sea material. Egypt: HUJ 9410 (1, 365), Nuweiba , May 1976 . Saudi Arabia: SMF 34963 [ KAU12-732 ] (1, 396), Jizan, 20–25 m, 1 Mar 2012 .

Comparative material. Indonesia: BPBM 30138 (1, 324, holotype) ; ANSP 175205 (1, 268, paratype) ; USNM 343860 (1, 317, paratype) .

Description. In TL: preanal length 2.2–2.4, predorsal length 8.9–11, head length 7.8–8.6, body depth at anus 21–29. In head length: snout length 5.7–7.6, eye diameter 7.5–10, upper-jaw length 2.8–3.3. Pores: LL 2, SO 3, IO 4, POM 6. Vertebrae: predorsal 5–9, preanal 48–52, total 124–130.

Body moderately elongate; anus before midlength; dorsal-fin origin before gill opening. Snout moderately short, jaws of equal length. Eye moderate, over middle of upper jaw. Anterior nostril tubular; posterior nostril above anterior part of eye.

Teeth conical to triangular, pointed, finely serrate on posterior edge. Intermaxillary teeth in a single peripheral series, 6 on each side; 0–3 median teeth. Maxillary teeth uniserial or biserial, 0–3 inner and 12–20 outer. Dentary teeth uniserial or biserial, with 0–5 larger inner teeth anteriorly, 16–24 smaller outer teeth. Vomerine teeth small, uniserial or biserial, about 6–12.

Color: body pale yellowish with two longitudinal rows of 35–39 irregular dark brown spots, most notably larger than orbit and in vertical alignment with spot of other row; a third row of irregular dark brown spots midventrally, these merging with spot above to form short bars on posterior two-thirds of tail; pale interspaces between large spots with numerous small dark brown spots of variable size, except ventrally. Head with numerous dark brown spots of variable size, a few dorsally on posterior half of head larger than orbit. Iris white. Anterior nostril pale.

Maximum size at least 396 mm.

Distribution and habitat. A rare species known from only five specimens from southern Indonesia and the Red Sea. Smith & Böhlke (1997: 186) pointed out that the specimen from Madras, India illustrated by Day (1878, pl. 169, fig. 4) as Muraena punctatofasciata appears to be Gymnothorax randalli , indicating that the species probably occurs continuously across the northern Indian Ocean to Indonesia. Probably living in open areas on silty sand substrata. The specimen from Saudi Arabia off Jizan was trawled from at a depth of 20–25 m in open area. One individual was photographed in sand area covered with seagrasses at depth of about 15 m at Nuweiba, Egypt (Sonja Ooms, pers. comm.).

Remarks. The two Red Sea specimens differ slightly in predorsal (5–7), preanal (48–49), and total (124–126) vertebrae from the Indonesian ones (7–9, 50–52, 127–130, respectively). SMF 34963 has a short row of distinctly biserial teeth on the vomer. The vomerine teeth of the other specimens are uniserial. We have no genetic data from outside the Red Sea. The sequence of the Red Sea specimen of G. randalli is part of a highly supported clade with G. minor (Temminck & Schlegel) , G. cf. minor and G. mccoskeri Smith & Böhlke , the latter being phylogenetically closest to G. randalli ( Fig. 48 ).

Figures

FIGURE 35. Gymnothorax randalli, SMF 34963 [KAU12-732], 396 mm TL, fresh specimen, Jizan, Saudi Arabia. Photo by S.V. Bogorodsky.

FIGURE 48. Unrooted maximum likelihood phylogeny of Indo-Pacific moray eels (Muraenidae) based on partial mitochondrial COI. Branch support values were obtained by 100 bootstrapped replicates; only bootstrap values above 50 percent are shown. The scale bar represents average number of nucleotide substitutions. (A) = specimen sequenced in this study; (B) = sequence retrieved from BOLD; (C) sequence retrieved from CRIOBE; (G) = sequence retrieved from GenBank; (R) = sequence retrieved from Reece et al. (2010); (ID) = species ID re-assigned herein; (ID-H) = specimen re-assigned as of Huang et al. (2019); (SAU) = collected in Saudi Arabia; (ISR) = collected in Israel.