KARNELLA: SYSTEMATIC STATUS OF MERLUCCIUS 



or nearly identical ranges for all characters in- 

 vestigated, and the average values for both are 

 generally only slightly divergent. 



The northern Gulf population is, in many char- 

 acters, divergent from the northern Atlantic 

 population, which led Ginsburg (1954) to de- 

 scribe this population as a distinct species. How- 

 ever, the northern Gulf population is also some- 

 what divergent from the southern Gulf and 

 Atlantic populations and, in both cases, the di- 

 vergence is clearly not great enough to warrant 

 recognition at the specific level. Furthermore, 

 the amount of overlap in all characters is of such 

 magnitude that individuals of the northern Gulf 

 population cannot always be distinguished from 

 individuals from other areas. Hence, M. mag- 

 noculus Ginsburg should be considered a junior 

 synonym of M. albidus (Mitchill). 



guidance throughout this study. The Southeast 

 Fisheries Center, Pascagoula Laboratory, Na- 

 tional Marine Fisheries Service provided the 

 bulk of the material from the Gulf of Mexico 

 and Caribbean; special thanks are due Bennie 

 A Rohr. Tomio Iwamoto of the University of 

 Miami searched through the University of Miami 

 Marine Laboratory and Tropical Atlantic Bio- 

 logical Laboratory collections to find valuable 

 material. Myvanwy M. Dick provided material 

 from the Museum of Comparative Zoology. 

 Keiko H. Moore of the National Marine Fisheries 

 Service prepared the figures. My especial thanks 

 go to George E. Clipper of the National Marine 

 Fisheries Service for his help and many valuable 

 suggestions. 



LITERATURE CITED 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



Daniel M. Cohen and Bruce B. Collette of the 

 National Systematics Laboratory, National Ma- 

 rine Fisheries Service, NOAA reviewed the man- 

 uscript and made valuable suggestions for im- 

 proving it. I thank them for their advice and 



Ginsburg, I. 



1954. Whitings on the coasts of the American con- 

 tinents. U.S. Fish Wildl. Serv., Fish. Bull. 56: 

 187-208. 

 Grinols, R. B., and M. F. Tillman. 



1970. Importance of the worldwide hake, Merluc- 

 cius, resource. In Pacific hake, p. 1-21. U.S. Fish 

 Wildl. Serv., Circ. 332. 



91 



