A NEW RECORD OF GYMNOTHORAX UNICOLOR (MURAENIDAE)IN THE SOUTHERN TYRRHENIAN SEA
Andrea Spinelli & Luca Castriota
in Marine Biodiversity, 2016, 47: 785–786
- Department of Chemical, Biological, Pharmaceutical and Environmental Sciences, University of Messina, 98166 Messina, Italy
- Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, ISPRA, 90143 Palermo, Italy
The brown moray Gymnothorax unicolor (Delaroche, 1809) is one of the three Muraenid species inhabiting the Mediterranean Sea. A single specimen of the non-indigenous species G. reticularis was recently recorded off the coast of Israel (Stern and Goren 2013). Gymnothorax unicolor has been also recorded in the eastern Atlantic, at Cape Verde, the Canary Islands, Madeira, the Azores, Morocco, and southern Portugal. It is considered very rare, and its biology is poorly investigated. It is a solitary nocturnal species, usually living in crevices and holes on rocky bottoms at depths of 10–80 m, and preys on crabs, gastropods, and cephalopods (Bini 1970; Didier Laurent et al. 2014).In 2014, one specimen of this rare species, G. unicolor was observed during a scuba dive at Cefalù (southern Tyrrhenian Sea), Sicily, Italy.
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