FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 73, NO. 2 



terranean Sea nor in the eastern tropical Pacific 

 (Ahlstrom and Counts 1958; Craddock and Mead 

 1970; Gorbunova 1972). The development of larvae 

 of V. nimharia is apparently quite similar to the 

 development of larvae of V. lucetia (Ahlstrom and 

 Counts 1958; Silas and George 1971). We have 

 examined specimens of V. nimharia from all of 

 our study areas except the eastern tropical Pacific 

 (where V.nimbaria is replaced by V. lucetia) and 

 the western equatorial Pacific (no material 

 available). 



Counts of IPVALA photophores for specimens 

 of V. nimharia are given in Table 6. Mean values 

 for specimens from the South China Sea, central 

 equatorial Pacific, Philippine Sea, central North 

 Atlantic, and central North Pacific agree in per- 

 fect rank-order with the rank-sum index of 

 meristic counts for specimens of Diplophos taenia 

 from these five areas (Table 3). The mean value of 

 counts of IPVALA photophores of Gulf of Guinea 

 specimens does not fit this trend, it is too high. All 

 of our material of V. nimharia from the Gulf of 

 Guinea came from a single collection at the 

 University of Miami (UMML 21902, lat. 0°54' to 

 1°05'N, long. 4°53' to 4°51'E, 23-24 May 1965). We 

 have neither additional material of nor informa- 

 tion on V. nimharia from the Gulf of Guinea, and, 

 for the present, we are unable to explain these 

 anomalous results. 



The values obtained for specimens of V. nim- 

 haria from other study areas support our 

 hypothesis of an inverse relationship between 

 meristic counts and productivity. This is true for 

 both IPVALA photophore (Table 6) and vertebral 

 (Table 7) counts. 



Counts for Arabian Sea (AS, Table 6) specimens 

 of V. nimharia are taken from Silas and George 

 (1971). They studied specimens taken off the 

 Malabar Coast of India and found larvae of V. 

 nimharia to be most abundant along the edge of 

 the continental shelf from Mangalore to south of 

 Cochin. Gushing (1971) discusses the strong up- 

 welling system occurring along this coast during 

 the period of the Northeast Monsoon, and notes 



Table 1 .— Vincigxierria nimharia, vertebrae. 



that high values of productivity occur in this area 

 over at least half of the year and are associated 

 with the upwelling system. Silas and George (1971) 

 found V. nimharia larvae to be most abundant 

 during the upwelling season. Values for produc- 

 tivity measures in this area given by Gushing 

 (1971) approach values for the eastern tropical 

 Pacific, are certainly larger than values for the 

 Philippine Sea, central North Atlantic, and central 

 North Pacific, and probably significantly larger 

 than values for the central equatorial Pacific and 

 South China Sea. We therefore expected values for 

 meristic counts of specimens of V. nimharia from 

 off the Mangalore Coast to be the lowest of any of 

 these six areas. They are (Table 6). 



Chauliodus sloani Bloch and Schneider 



Chauliodus sloani occurs in tropical and 

 temperate waters from the North Atlantic to the 

 eastern Pacific, although throughout large oceanic 

 areas it is replaced by other species of Chauliodus. 

 The remaining six species of Chauliodus, includ- 

 ing the recently described C. vasnetzovi Novikova, 

 are limited to smaller areas, each entirely within 

 one ocean basin (Morrow 1961; Gibbs and Hurwitz 

 1967; Novikova 1972). 



We have examined specimens of C. sloani only 

 from our Philippine Sea and central North Pacific 

 study areas, but data from other sources (Ege 

 1948; Blache 1964; Gibbs and Hurwitz 1967) have 

 made it possible to compare our results for C. 

 sloani with counts for this species from other 

 areas, and with counts for the closely related 

 species C. pammelas Alcock and C schmidti Ege 

 (Table 8). IC photophore counts of C sloani from 

 central gyral areas (CNP, CNA, PS) are higher 

 than counts from specimens taken in the South 



Table 6.-Vinciguerria nimharia. IPVALA photophore counts. AS = study area of Silas and George (1971) along Malabar Coast of 

 India in the Arabian Sea, data taken from their study. Counts presented as the average between right and left sizes of each specimen. 



Area 



64 64.5 65 65.5 66 66.5 67 67.5 68 68.5 69 69.5 70 70.5 71 71.5 72 72.5 73 n Mean ± 95% limits 



AS 



GG 



SCS 



CEP 



PS 



CNA 



CNP 



2 - 



1 - 



10 

 2 

 1 



4 

 14 

 24 



1 



6 



26 

 2 



4 

 20 



1 



1 



37 



4 



3 



83 



2 



18 



36 



1 

 15 



16 



1 - - 



290 



