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Fishery Bulletin 98(3) 



(2.9 mm I than in reared larvae, whereas fin pigmentation 

 seemingly appeared later in development (Tables 1-4). 

 Comparisons of the ratios of head length, preanal length, 

 body depth, and orbit diameter to body length indicated 

 that development in the laboratory resulted in larvae that 

 mirrored development in the wild. 



Discussion 



The larvae of as many as eighteen species of snappers in 

 three subfamilies can occur in the western Central Atlan- 

 tic which includes the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, 

 The early life stages of the subfamily Apsilinae are mostly 

 unknown but the low number of dorsal soft rays ( 10, rarely 

 9 1 should separate late-stage larvae and juveniles of Aps/- 

 lus dentatus from larvae of species in the other two sub- 

 families (Leis et al,, 1997; Leis and Lee, 1994; Richards et 

 al,, 1994), Eteline snappers are represented by four spe- 

 cies in GOM collections, Etelis oculatus and three species 

 of Pristiponwides. The larvae of these taxa should be sepa- 

 rable from lutjanine larvae by body shape and spine struc- 

 ture because eteline larvae are slender bodied and have 

 weaker median fin spines (Leis and Lee, 1994; Richards 

 et al,, 1994), The lower dorsal coimt of etelines (21) will 



also distinguish larvae from lutjanines (22-24) in speci- 

 mens whose total dorsal elements can be counted (Leis 

 and Lee, 1994; Richards et al,, 1994 ), The majority of snap- 

 pers ( 13 species) found in the area belong to the subfamily 

 Lutjaninae (Richards et al,, 1994 1, Distinguishing the lut- 

 janine larvae from each other is difficult despite published 

 larval descriptions for six taxa: Rhomboplites aurorubens 

 (Laroche, 1977); Lutjanus griseus (Richards and Saksena, 

 1980); Ocyunis chrysurus (Riley et al,, 1995; Clarke et al,, 

 1997); L. synagris (Clarke et al,, 1997); L. analls (Clarke 

 et al., 1997); and L. campechanus (Rabalais et al,, 1980; 

 Collins et al., 1980; and our study). We undertook a syn- 

 thesis of these published descriptions and illustrations to 

 better evaluate the usefulness of various characters in dis- 

 tinguishing the larvae of lutjanine species occurring in the 

 GulfofMexico (Table 51. 



Our tabulated character list is not exhaustive and rep- 

 resents only those features for which known GOM lutja- 

 nine larvae appear to differ. Dorsal-fin meristics can be 

 used to narrow the possible choices among species once 

 total fin element number is established and even before 

 spines and rays are completely differentiated. Only four 

 species have 22 or 23 total dorsal elements and of these, R. 

 aurnruhens is the only species with 12 dorsal spines; the 

 other three usually have 10 spines. Body shape may also 



