Abstract
Seven Operational Taxonomic Units within the blenniid genus Antennablennius are recognised from the north-western Indian Ocean, based on the Cytochrome oxidase-c subunit I gene (CO1). Five of them can be referred to nominal species with certainty. Two additional distinct lineages originate from the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, and the Socotra Archipelago. They were initially, morphologically, identified as A. adenensis Fraser-Brunner, 1951, yet could hitherto not be referred to this species with certainty, requiring further genetic data. Detailed descriptions accompanied by photographs are provided for six species, including A. adenensis. Antennablennius persicus (Regan, 1905) is resurrected from the synonymy of A. bifilum (Günther, 1861) and re-described based on specimens from the Iranian coast of the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, increasing the number of valid species in the genus to eight. The former differs from the latter species in details of morphology and coloration, supported by genetic data. A revised key to all species of the genus is included. A phylogenetic investigation of the genus based on Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Bayesian Inference (BI) analyses of the CO1 data is presented for the first time.
References
- Akaike, H. (1974) A New Look at the Statistical Model Identification. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 19, 716–723. https://doi.org/10.1109/TAC.1974.1100705
- Aliabadian, M., Nijman, V., Mahmoudi, A., Naderi, M., Vonk, R. & Vences, M. (2014) ExcaliBAR: a simple and fast software utility to calculate intra- and interspecific distances from DNA barcodes. Contributions to Zoology, 83, 79–83. https://doi.org/10.1163/18759866-08301004
- Bath, H. (1983) Revision der Gattung Antennablennius Fowler 1931 mit Beschreibung einer neuen Art und Untersuchung der taxonomischen Stellung von Antennablennius anuchalis Springer & Spreitzer 1978. Senckenbergiana biologica, 64, 47–80.
- Blegvad, H. (1944) Fishes of the Iranian Gulf. In: Jessen, K. & Spärck, R. (Eds.), Danish Scientific Investigations in Iran. Part III. Einar Munksgaard, Copenhagen, pp. 1–247.
- Bullock, R., Ralph, G., Stump, E., Abdali, F.A., Asfoor, J.A., Buwaiqi, B.A., Birge, T., Borsa, P., Dario, Di Dario, F., Everett, B., Fennessy, S., Fonseca, C., Gorman, C., Govender, A., Ho, H., Holleman, W., Jiddawi, N., Khan, M., Larson, H., Linardich, C., Matiku, P., Matsuura, K., Maunde, C., Motomura, H., Munroe, T., Nair, R., Obota, C., Polidoro, B., Russell, B., Shaheen, S., Sithole, Y., Smith-Vaniz, W.F., Uiblein, F., Weerts, S., Williams, A., Yahya, S. & Carpenter, K. (2021) The conservation status of marine biodiversity of the western Indian Ocean. IUCN, Gland, 31 pp.
- Eagderi, S., Fricke, R., Esmaeili, H.R. & Jalili, P. (2019) Annotated checklist of the fishes of the Persian Gulf: Diversity and conservation status. Iranian Journal of Ichthyology, 6, 1–171. https://doi.org/10.22034/iji.v6i0.454
- Esmaeili, H. R., Al Jufaili, S.M., Sayyadzadeh, G. & Echreshavi, S. (2022) An updated checklist of blenniiform fishes (Teleostei: Blenniiformes) in the north-western Indian Ocean: Taxonomy, diversity, and conservation status. FishTaxa, 24, 1–41.
- Estekani, S., Attaran-Fariman, G. & Ghasemzadeh, J. (2020) Study on Blennies fishes (Blenniidae Rafinesque 1810) from Makoran coastal waters (Southeast of Iran). Iranian Journal of Fisheries Sciences, 19 (2), 1006–1014.
- Ferrari, G., Esselens, L., Hart, ML., Janssens, S., Kidner, C., Mascarello, M., Peñalba, JV., Pezzini, F., von Rintelen, T., Sonet, G., Vangestel, C., Virgilio, M. & Hollingsworth, P.M. (2023) Developing the Protocol Infrastructure for DNA Sequencing Natural History Collections. Biodiversity Data Journal, 11, e102317. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.11.e102317
- Fowler, H.W. (1931) The fishes obtained by the De Schauensee South African Expedition, 1930. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 83, 233–249.
- Fraser-Brunner, A. (1951) Some new blennioid fishes, with a key to the genus Antennablennius. Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Series 12, 4, 312–220. https://doi.org/10.1080/00222935108654145
- Fricke, R., Eschmeyer, W.N. & van der Laan, R. (Eds.) (2023) Eschmeyer’s catalog of fishes, electronic version (06 November 2023). San Francisco: Internet Publication (California Academy of Sciences). Available from: http://research.calacademy.org/research/Ichthyology/Catalog/fishcatmain.asp (accessed 6 November 2023)
- Fricke, R., Mahafina, J., Behivoke, F., Jaonalison, H., Léopold, M. & Ponton, D. (2018) Annotated checklist of the fishes of Madagascar, southwestern Indian Ocean, with 158 new records. FishTaxa, 3 (1), 1–432.
- Golani, D. & Fricke, R. (2018) Checklist of the Red Sea fishes with delineation of the Gulf of Suez, Gulf of Aqaba, endemism and Lessepsian migrants. Zootaxa, 4509 (1), 1–215. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4509.1.1
- Günther, A. (1861) Catalogue of the fishes in the British Museum. Catalogue of the acanthopterygian fishes in the collection of the British Museum. Gobiidae, Discoboli, Pediculati, Blenniidae, Labyrinthici, Mugilidae, Notacanthi. Vol. 3. Department of Zoology, British Museum (Natural History), London, 586 pp.
- Hall, T.A. (1999) BioEdit: A user-friendly biological sequence alignment Editor and Analysis Program for Windows 95/98/NT. Nucleic Acids Symposium Series, 41, 95–98.
- Hoang, D.T., Chernomor, O., von Haeseler, A., Minh, B.Q. & Vinh, L.S. (2018) UFBoot2: Improving the Ultrafast Bootstrap Approximation. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 35, 518–522. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msx281
- Huelsenbeck, J.P. & Ronquist, F. (2001) MRBAYES: Bayesian inference of phylogenetic trees. Bioinformatics, 17, 754–755. https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/17.8.754
- Hundt, P.J., Iglésias, S.P., Hoey, A.S. & Simons, A.M. (2014) A multilocus molecular phylogeny of combtooth blennies (Percomorpha: Blennioidei: Blenniidae): Multiple invasions of intertidal habitats. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 70, 47–56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2013.09.001
- Jatzow, R. & Lenz, H. (1898) Fische von Ost-Afrika, Madagaskar und Aldabra. Abhandlungen der Senckenbergischen Naturforschenden Gesellschaft, 21, 497–531.
- Khalaf, M.A. (2004) Fish fauna along the Jordanian Coast—Gulf of Aqaba. Journal of Faculty of Marine Science, 15, 23–50. https://doi.org/10.4197/mar.15-1.2
- Kier, G., Kreft, H., Lee, T.-M., Jetz, W., Ibisch, P.L., Nowicki, C., Mutke, J. & Barthlott, W. (2009) A global assessment of endemism and species richness across island and mainland regions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106 (23), 9322–9327. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0810306106
- Kimmerling, N., Zuqert, O., Amitai, G., Gurevich, T., Armoza-Zvuloni, R., Kolesnikov, I., Berenshtein, I., Melamed, S., Gilad, S., Benjamin, S., Rivlin, A., Ohavia, M., Paris, C.B., Holzman, R., Kiflawi, M. & Sorek, R. (2018) Quantitative species-level ecology of reef fish larvae via metabarcoding. Nature Ecology and Evolution, 2, 306–316. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0413-2
- Klunzinger, C.B. (1871) Synopsis der Fische des Rothen Meeres. II. Theil. Verhandlungen der K.-K. zoologisch-botanischen Gesellschaft in Wien, 21, 441–688. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.14760
- Lal Mohan, R.S. (1968) On a collection of blennies from Gujarat Coast with some new records. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of India, 10, 118–125.
- Lanfear, R., Calcott, B., Ho, S.Y.W. & Guindon, S. (2012) Partitionfinder: combined selection of partitioning schemes and substitution models for phylogenetic analyses. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 29, 1695–1701. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/mss020
- Leigh, J.W. & Bryant, D. (2015) POPART: Full-feature software for haplotype network construction. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 6, 1110–1116. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.12410
- Librado, P. & Rozas, J. (2009) DnaSP v5: A software for comprehensive analysis of DNA polymorphism data. Bioinformatics, 25, 1451–1452. https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btp187
- Lin, H. & Hastings, P.A. (2013) Phylogeny and biogeography of a shallow water fish clade (Teleostei: Blenniiformes). BMC Evolutionary Biology, 13, 1. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-13-210
- Lips, J., Lips, B. & Roux, J.-M. (2016) Poissons de Djibouti. Université de Djibouti, Djibouti, 216 pp.
- Mehraban, H. & Esmaeili, H.R. (2018) Comb-tooth blennies of the intertidal zones of Persian Gulf and Makran Sea: Morphology, taxonomy, distribution and conservation status (Blenniiformes: Blenniidae). Iranian Journal of Ichthyology, 5 (3), 192–211. https://doi.org/10.22034/iji.v5i3.295
- Mehraban, H., Zarei, F. & Esmaeili, H.R. (2021) A prelude to the molecular systematics and diversity of combtooth blennies (Teleostei: Blenniidae) in the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea. Systematics and Biodiversity, 19, 438–452. https://doi.org/10.1080/14772000.2021.1895900
- Nguyen, L.-T., Schmidt, H.A., von Haeseler, A. & Minh, B.Q. (2015) IQ-TREE: A Fast and Effective Stochastic Algorithm for Estimating Maximum-Likelihood Phylogenies. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 32, 268–274. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msu300
- Patzner, R.A., Gonçalves, E.J., Hastings, P.A. & Kapoor, B.G. (2009a) The Biology of Blennies. CRS Press, Boca Raton, Florida, 494 pp. https://doi.org/10.1201/b10301
- Patzner, R.A., Hastings, P.A., Springer, V., Wirtz, P. & Gonçalves, E.J. (2009b) List of Valid Species of Blennies. In: Patzner, R.A., Gonçalves, E.J., Hastings, P.A. & Kapoor, B.G. (Eds.), The Biology of Blennies. CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida, pp. 441–476.
- Randall, J.E. (1995) Coastal fishes of Oman. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, Hawaii, 439 pp.
- Randall, J., Downing, E.D., McCarthy, N., Stanaland, L.J., Tarr, B.E. & Bradley, A. (1994) Fifty-one new records of fishes from the Arabian Gulf. Fauna of Saudi Arabia, 14, 220–258.
- Regan, C.T. (1905) On fishes from the Persian Gulf, the Sea of Oman, and Karachi, collected by Mr. FW Townsend. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 16, 318–333.
- Ronquist, F., Teslenko, M., van der Mark, P., Ayres, D.L., Darling, A., Höhna, S., Larget, B., Liu, L., Suchard, M.A. & Huelsenbeck, J.P. (2012) MrBayes 3.2: Efficient Bayesian Phylogenetic Inference and Model Choice Across a Large Model Space. Systematic Biology, 61, 539–542. https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/sys029
- Ryanskiy, A. (2022) Red Sea marine life. Andrey Ryanskiy, 300 pp.
- Sharifiniya, M., Mousavi-Sabet, H., Alavi-Yeganeh, M.S. & Ghanbarifardi, M. (2021) An updated and critical checklist of combtooth blennies in the subtidal and intertidal zones of the Iranian coasts of the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea (Blenniiformes: Blenniidae). aqua, International Journal of Ichthyology, 27, 57–80.
- Shaw, K.L. (2001) The genealogical view of speciation: Commentary. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 14, 880–882. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1420-9101.2001.00337.x
- Smith, J.L.B. (1959) Fishes of the families Blenniidae and Salariidae of the western Indian Ocean. Ichthyological Bulletin, Department of Ichthyology, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, 14, 227–252, figs. 1–16, pls. 14–18.
- Smith-Vaniz, W.F. & Allen, G.R. (2012) Alloblennius frondiculus, a new species of blenny from the Andaman Islands (Teleostei: Blenniidae: Salariini). Zootaxa, 3199 (1), 60–65. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3199.1.2
- Smith-Vaniz, W.F. & Springer, V.G. (1971) Synopsis of the tribe Salariini, with description of five new genera and three new species (Pisces: Blenniidae). Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology, 73, 1–72. https://doi.org/10.5479/si.00810282.73
- Springer, V.G., Bath, H., Randall, J.E., Fishes, D. & Museum, N. (1998) Remarks on the Species of the Indian Ocean Fish Genus Alloblennius Smith-Vaniz & Springer 1971, (Blenniidae). aqua, International Journal of Ichthyology, 3, 19–24. https://doi.org/10.5479/si.00810282.268
- Springer, V.G. & Spreitzer, A.E. (1978) Five new species and a new genus of Indian Ocean blenniid fishes, tribe Salariini, with a key to genera of the tribe. Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology, 268, 1–20.
- Steindachner, F. (1902) Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse der südarabischen Expedition in den Jahren 1898 bis 1899. Fische von Südarabien und Socotra. Anzeiger der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien, Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Classe, 39 (24/76), 316–318.
- Steinke, D., Zemlak, T.S., Boutillier, J.A. & Hebert, P.D.N. (2009) DNA barcoding of Pacific Canada’s fishes. Marine Biology, 156, 2641–2647. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-009-1284-0
- Tamura, K., Stecher, G., Peterson, D., Filipski, A. & Kumar, S. (2013) MEGA6: Molecular evolutionary genetics analysis version 6.0. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 30, 2725–2729. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/mst197
- Thompson, J.D., Higgins, D.G. & Gibson, T.J. (1994) CLUSTAL W: improving the sensitivity of progressive multiple sequence alignment through sequence weighting, position-specific gap penalties and weight matrix choice. Nucleic Acids Research, 22 (22), 4673–80. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/22.22.4673
- Tortonese, E. (1975) Fishes from the Gulf of Aden. Monitore Zoologico Italiano. Supplemento, 6, 167–188. https://doi.org/10.1080/03749444.1975.10736813
- Trifinopoulos, J., Nguyen, L.-T., von Haeseler, A. & Minh, B.Q. (2016) W-IQ-TREE: a fast online phylogenetic tool for maximum likelihood analysis. Nucleic Acids Research, 44, W232–235. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkw256
- Ward, R.D., Hanner, R. & Hebert, P.D.N. (2009) The campaign to DNA barcode all fishes, FISH-BOL. Journal of Fish Biology, 74, 329–356. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1095-8649.2008.02080.x
- Williams, J.T. (1990) Phylogenetic relationships and revision of the blenniid fish genus Scartichthys. Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology, 492, 1–30. https://doi.org/10.5479/si.00810282.492
- Williams, J.T. & Springer, V.G. (2022) Family Blenniidae. In: Heemstra, P.C., Heemstra, E., Ebert, D.A., Holleman, W. & Randall, J.E. (Eds.), Coastal fishes of the Western Indian Ocean. Vol. 4. South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity, Makhanda, pp. 326–383.
- Zajonz, U., Lavergne, E., Bogorodsky, S.V., Saeed, F.N., Aideed, M.S. & Krupp, F. (2019) Coastal fish diversity of the Socotra Archipelago, Yemen. Zootaxa, 4636 (1), 1–108. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4636.1.1
- Zemlak, T.S., Ward, R.D., Connell, A.D., Holmes, B.H. & Hebert, P.D.N. (2009) DNA barcoding reveals overlooked marine fishes. Molecular Ecology Resources, 9, 237–242. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1755-0998.2009.02649.x