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PACIFIC SCIENCE, Vol. XVIII, July 1964 
report that it has 19 pectoral rays and 14 dorsal 
soft rays. A photograph was kindly supplied by 
Blanc, herein reproduced as Figure 11. 
Blanc and Roux also examined the type of 
Serranus taeniochirus Cuvier and Valenciennes, 
a species which has been placed by some authors 
in the synonymy of fuscoguttatus; however this 
does not seem to be correct. S. taeniochirus has 
16 dorsal soft rays and lacks a dark spot dorsally 
on the caudal peduncle; therefore it is probably 
neither fuscoguttatus nor microdon. 
At the request of the author, Eugenie Clark 
procured a specimen of fuscoguttatus from the 
Red Sea. The specimen (USNM 197323) meas- 
ures 574 mm in standard length, 700 mm in 
total length, and weighs (in preservative) 9Vl 
pounds. It was caught by trolling in 12 ft of 
water off Entedebin, Dahlak Archipelago, on 
April 5, 1962. The spots on the body were 
orange-brown in life, more orange ventrally, and 
there is a prominent black saddle on the caudal 
peduncle. There are 19 pectoral rays, 15 dorsal 
soft rays (the last two closely spaced), and 9 + 1 
+ 17 gill rakers. The rakers on the upper limb 
are sessile and difficult to count. Previous counts 
of the rakers on the upper limb of smaller speci- 
mens of fuscoguttatus were all 11-13. Possibly 
there is a loss of gill rakers in larger fish because 
of fusion. 
This is the largest specimen examined by the 
author. Morgans (1958) reported fuscoguttatus 
from East Africa to a standard length of 760 
mm, a total length of 885 mm, and a weight of 
24 lb. Boulenger (1895) reported the largest as 
900 mm total length. It seems obvious that it 
attains a greater size than does microdon, the 
largest of which examined by Morgans is 465 
mm in standard length, 565 mm in total length, 
and 8 l /i lb in weight. 
A 334-mm specimen from Onotoa, Gilbert 
Islands, collected by the author in 1951, was 
colored in life as follows: light brownish yellow 
with numerous small orange-brown spots ( more 
evident on head than on body ) and large irregu- 
lar dark brown blotches (smaller spots super- 
imposed on the large dark blotches ) ; one of the 
irregular blotches begins behind the eye and 
extends to the nape; those on the body occur in 
an irregular series of five bars, the last on the 
caudal peduncle beginning with the dark dorsal 
blotch. The large blotches are darker on the 
upper third of the body than on the lower two- 
thirds. 
No individuals of fuscoguttatus were seen or 
collected in Tahiti or other islands of French 
Oceania. E. microdon, on the other hand, is 
common in the Tuamotu Archipelago, although 
rare in the Society Islands. 
THE IDENTITY OF Epinephelus tauvina 
( FORSKAL ) 
Figure 12 represents a photograph of the 
holotype of Perea tauvina Forskal, a dried skin, 
from the Red Sea. It was provided by J0rgen 
Nielsen of the Universitetets Zoologiske Mu- 
seum in Copenhagen. He also supplied the fol- 
lowing fin-ray counts for the specimen: dorsal 
rays XI, 15 or 16; anal rays III, 8; pectoral rays 
18. 
Epinephelus elongatus Schultz was described 
from specimens collected in the Marshall Islands, 
Mariana Islands, Samoa Islands, and Phoenix 
Islands. Two specimens in the National Mu- 
seum, 110 and 218 mm in standard length, 
( USNM 166985-6) collected at Ghardaqa, Red 
Sea, by Eugenie Clark, were compared to the 
Pacific material of elongatus and proved to be 
the same. Specimens of elongatus of the same 
size as the holotype of tauvina (larger speci- 
mens have more spots than smaller ones) were 
compared with the photograph of the holotype, 
and they appear identical; thus the decision by 
Katayama (I960) to refer elongatus to the 
synonymy of tauvina seems correct. 
Epinephelus tauvina is not common in the 
Society Islands. The largest of 12 specimens that . 
were collected is 498 mm in standard length. In 
the smaller sizes it can be confused with two 
small dark-spotted groupers, Epinephelus merra 
and E. hexagonatus. It may be differentiated 
from these in having 15 instead of 16 dorsal 
soft rays, 27-30 gill rakers (total count) on the 
first arch (gill rakers of merra range from 20 
to 23 and those of hexagonatus from 23 to 27), 
and more elongate body (depth 33-3.7 in 
standard length in contrast to 3.2-33 for the 
other two species). E. tauvina was observed at 
depths of 10-150 ft (few observations were 
made in deeper water ) in both lagoon and outer 
reef environments. 
