A new congrid eel, Rhynchoconger randalli sp. nov. (Congridae: Anguilliformes), with a pentagonal pattern of vomer dentition from the Bay of Bengal, Indian waters

Abstract

A new species Rhynchoconger randalli sp. nov. is described herein on the basis of 2 specimens collected from Paradeep fishing harbor, Odisha, India along the Bay of Bengal from a depth of about 36–40 meters. The pentagonal vomerine teeth pattern is unique among all the Rhynchoconger species described to date. The new species is characterized by predorsal vertebrae 7–8 and preanal vertebrae 29–31. The new species closely resembles the recently described Rhynchoconger smithi, but differs in having a larger eye diameter (12.5‒12.9% HL vs. 9.5‒9.7% in R. smithi), smaller interorbital space (13.1‒13.5% HL vs. 15.0‒18.1 in R. smithi), lower dorsal-fin ray count before vent 44‒47 vs. 54‒58 in R. smithi, and unique pentagonal vomerine teeth pattern.

A new deep‐water conger eel of the genus Rhynchoconger (Anguilliformes: Congridae) from the south‐west coast of India, Arabian Sea

“…Among the nine valid species, only three species, R. ectenurus , R. guppyi and R. trewavasae , were documented from the deep water of about 200–500 m. The new species described here was also collected from the deep waters of the Arabian Sea, forming the fourth Rhynchoconger species described or documented from the deep waters. The species described from India were collected from pelagic waters, R. smithi at about 95 m depth and R. randalli at about 36–40 m depth along the Northern Bay of Bengal (Acharya et al ., 2022). The new species R. bicoloratus was collected at a depth of 200–300 m along the Exclusive Economic Zone of Indian waters and showed high genetic divergence with the Indian waters species R. smithi (17.0%).…”

“…The genus Rhynchoconger Jordan & Hubbs, 1925 consists of nine valid species belonging to the subfamily Congrinae. Of these, three species, Rhynchoconger flavus (Goode & Bean, 1896), Rhynchoconger gracilior (Ginsburg, 1951) and Rhynchoconger guppyi (Norman, 1925), are distributed in the Western Atlantic (Fricke et al ., 2022), Rhynchoconger ectenurus (Jordan & Richardson, 1909) (Kotthaus, 1968; Manilo & Bogorodsky, 2003; Venu, 2013), Rhynchoconger randalli Acharya et al ., 2022, Rhynchoconger smithi Mohapatra et al ., 2022 and Rhynchoconger squaliceps (Alcock, 1894) are distributed in the Western Pacific and Indian oceans (Acharya et al ., 2022; Mohapatra et al ., 2022), Rhynchoconger nitens (Jordan & Bollman, 1890) is distributed along the Eastern Pacific, and Rhynchoconger trewavasae Ben‐Tuvia, 1993 is distributed along the Red Sea. Among these nine species, only three species were documented from the deep waters: R. ectenurus was collected from 200 to 500 m depth along Taiwan waters (Mohapatra et al ., 2022), R. guppyi from 137 to 458 m depth of the Western Central Atlantic and R. trewavasae from 400 m depth at the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea (Ben‐Tuvia, 1993).…”