IWAMOTO & WIRTZ: SYNOPSIS OF EASTERN ATLANTIC SERRANUS 
3 
ous underwater photographs by the second author and others (see Acknowledgments) as well as 
freshly captured specimens. The term stripe is used for narrow horizontal to diagonal markings, 
whereas band, bar, and saddle refer to more-or-less vertical markings. Sizes given in the Specimens 
Examined sections are in standard length (SL) and head length (HL); those in the text under Size 
are for total length (TL). We have made liberal use of published descriptions and records for this 
study and have made an effort to cite all appropriate references. The reader is referred to the Check¬ 
list of the fishes of the eastern tropical Atlantic (Quero et al. 1990) for extensive synonymies. Full 
references for scientific names are provided in Eschmeyer’s Catalog of Fishes (2018) online at 
<http://research, calacademy. org/research/ichthyology/catalog/fishcatmain. asp>. 
Taxonomy 
Genus Serranus Cuvier, 1817 
Type species Perea cabrilla Linnaeus, 1758 (as designated by ICZN, Official List, Opinion 93). 
Diagnosis. — D X,12-15; A 111,6-8, usually 7; P 12-18; V 1,5; BR 7; vertebrae 10+14. 
Dorsal fin undivided, spinous and soft rays broadly united; caudal fin truncate, emarginate, or 
moderately forked, with 17 principal rays (15 branched); supramaxilla absent; teeth on vomer and 
palatines, none on tongue. Opercle with two or (usually) three flattened spines, the lowermost 
sometimes obscure or undeveloped; central spine largest and directed horizontally. A spinous- 
edged suprascapular scale present. Scales mostly ctenoid, but some species have cycloid scales on 
head or trunk and S. drewesi n. sp. has all scales cycloid; interorbit, occiput, upper part of postor¬ 
bital region and interopercle variously scaled or naked; lateral line complete, with pored scales; 
maxilla naked. Species probably all synchronous hermaphrodites. Most species small, less than 20 
cm TL, but a few attain about 40 cm TL (mostly from Robins and Starck, 1961:261). 
Remarks. — Members of the genus are found on both sides of the Atlantic (including the 
Mediterranean and Black Seas, and in the Red Sea as an invasive), in the tropical eastern Pacific, 
and in the southwestern Indian Ocean off South Africa. The highest diversity is found in the west¬ 
ern central Atlantic (14 spp.), followed by the eastern Atlantic (10 spp.), the eastern Pacific (6 spp.), 
and the Indian Ocean (2 spp.). The species are apparently endemic to each region, as no species is 
found in more than one region. Kuiter (2004:80) listed 30 described species of Serranus and two 
undescribed species, but one of the described species he listed is Chelidoperca africana Cadenat, 
1960, which we consider as the only member of Chelidoperca in the Atlantic. Chelidoperca is oth¬ 
erwise known from 10 other species of the Indo-West Pacific (Matsunuma et al. 2018). Table 1 lists 
32 species of Serranus, based on Kuiter (loc. cit.) and our findings. 
Robins and Starck (1961) comprehensively treated the western Atlantic species of Serranus 
and provided valuable additional information on the genus, its included species, and relationships 
to other serranines; they also gave excellent descriptions of three eastern Atlantic species for which 
they had specimens. They considered that the anal fin-ray count of III,7 was the common number, 
but we found that our two specimens of S. atricauda had III,8, as did one of our specimens of 
S. scriba (CAS-SU 20897). Meisler (1987:152) stated that, S. atricauda “is the only Serranus 
species to have exclusively eight anal rays.“ Heemstra and Anderson (2016:2410) gave the anal 
fin-ray count for S. hepatus as III,6 or 7, but seven of our 10 specimens of that species had a count 
of III,7; the other had III,6. The holotype and only specimen of S. drewesi n.sp. has an anal fin-ray 
count of III,6. 
It is regrettable that Martin R. Meisler’s Ph.D. dissertation (1987) was never published 
inasmuch as it is a comprehensive revisionary work on the group, based on study of most of the 
