526 



Fishery Bulletin 98(3) 



Closer scrutiny of characters, such as the number of 

 pav spots, the enlarged pav spot, and the gap in the pav 

 series, may allow identification of preflexion and early 

 flexion snapper larvae, if not to a single species, at least 

 to a reduced number of possibilities. Of course, larvae of 

 the remaining snapper species need to be described before 

 all small "undifferentiated snapper larvae" can be reli- 

 ably and consistently identified to the species level. Inves- 

 tigation of additional characters among preflexion larvae 

 such as the presence and location of other chromatophores, 

 may yield further useful species-specific traits (Riley et al., 

 1995). Initial observations of L. campechanus show yellow 

 chromatophores in similar locations ( head and gut area ) as 

 those reported for O. chrysuriis (Riley et al., 1995). Among 

 larger L. campechanus specimens, additional chromato- 

 phores were present in locations not noted for O. chrys- 

 urus larvae. More specific comparisons will have to await 

 a larger sample size to determine variability in numbers 

 of chromatophores and size at development. Additionally, 

 biochemical techniques are currently being investigated 

 for the purpose of species-specific identification of snapper 

 larvae (Chow et al, 1993; Sarver et al., 1996; Schultz et 

 al., 1996). Initial results seem to indicate that no single 

 technique will distinguish between all species in the sub- 

 family Lutjaninae. Use of these biochemical assay meth- 

 ods for routine identification of snapper larvae may not be 

 feasible for specimens taken during broadscale surveys. 

 Yet a positive species identification of subsamples of field- 

 caught snapper larvae with biochemical methods may lead 

 to recognition of morphological features that have been 

 previously overlooked and determination of the error rate 

 of morphologically based identifications. 



Acknowledgments 



Most of the work for this study was done while the pri- 

 mary author was employed by Johnson Controls World 

 Services. Gratitude is expressed to the following individ- 

 uals for their able assistance during the course of this 

 study and the support of the institutions they represent: 

 the staff of the Claude Peteet Mariculture Center, partic- 

 ularly Jim Duffy; John Ogle, Casey Nicholson, Jeff Lotz, 

 Donald Barnes, Mae Blake and Pam Bond of the Gulf Coast 

 Research Laboratory, University of Southern Mississippi; 

 and Kim Williams of the SEAMAP Archiving Center at 

 the Florida Marine Research Institute, St. Petersburg, FL. 

 The Texas study was funded by Grant NA16RGO457-03 

 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra- 

 tion through The Texas Sea Grant College Program. We 

 thank W. J. Richards for reading an earlier draft and two 

 anonymous reviewers for comments on the manuscript. 



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