FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 79. NO. 4 



er (1948), including Teng (1962), Matsubara 

 (1963), Chen (1963), Garrick and Schultz (1963), 

 Fitch and Craig (1964), and Kato et al. (1967), 

 recognized A . profundus as distinct, though Kato 

 et al. suggested that it might be identical to 

 A. superciliosus. Bass et al. (1975) synonymized 

 A. profundus and A. superciliosus because the 

 relative positions of anal and second dorsal fins, 

 relative sizes of first dorsal and pelvic fins, and 

 absence of a lower precaudal pit were, in their 

 opinion, "...highly variable and probably invalid 

 as diagnostic characters," but they did not discuss 

 the matter further. Our analysis of the characters 



supposedly separating A . profundus and A . super- 

 ciliosus leads us to concur with Bass et al. in 

 synonymizing these species. 



We have taken Nakamura's (1935) original 

 measurements of A. profundus and converted 

 them to precaudal proportions for comparison 

 with other bigeye threshers (Table 1) and find that 

 most of them fall within the range for other 

 specimens identified as A. superciliosus. The dif- 

 ferences listed by Bigelow and Schroeder (1948) 

 for A . profundus and A . superciliosus appear to be 

 based on ontogenetic changes and individual vari- 

 ation in a single species, or, in the case of the pelvic 



Table l. — Measurements of 13 specimens of Alopias superciliosus from the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. All 

 values are proportional to precaudal length (given as unity) except rows 1 and 2 which are in centimeters as indicated. 



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