FIRST RECORD OF THE POR’S GOATFISH UPENEUS PORI (ACTINOPTERYGII: PERCIFORMES: MULLIDAE) FROM ITALIAN WATERS (WESTERN IONIAN SEA)

During May 2017, two specimens of the Lessepsian fish species, Upeneus pori Ben-Tuvia et Golani, 1989, were recorded for the first time from the waters off eastern Sicily, Italy, along the western Ionian Sea. The species apparently expanded its distribution within the central Mediterranean, from the already colonized Tunisian waters. This new finding increases to nine the number of Lessepsian fish species reported from southern Italian waters to date.

The Por's goatfish, Upeneus pori, is a subtropical species, distributed along the western Indian Ocean, from the southern part of the Red Sea to southern Oman (Ben-Tuvia and Golani 1989). This species entered the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal (Golani 2010) where it was first recorded in the Gulf of Iskenderun (Turkey) by Kosswig (1950) as Upenoides (= Upeneus) tragula. Since its initial detection in the Mediterranean, U. pori has been considered to have successfully established itself in the Levantine basin, extending westwards as far as the Aegean Sea and the central Mediterranean ( Fig. 1, Table 1).
It is a commercially important demersal species, living mostly on sandy and muddy substrates up to a depth of 50 m, and caught in large quantities through trawling in shallow waters (10-40 m) along the eastern Levantine Sea coasts (Yemisken et al. 2014, Bilecenoğlu 2016.
The first record of U. pori in southern Italian waters is hereby reported and the distribution of the species in the Mediterranean Sea is updated. The current occurrence of this fish of Indo-Pacific, Indian, and Red Sea origin in the central Mediterranean is briefly reviewed.
On 2 May 2017, the first specimen of Upeneus pori was caught, by a local fisherman using a traditional seine net (called by Sicilian fishermen "tartarone") in the coastal waters off Catania, on the Italian island of Sicily, within the western Ionian (37.471359°N, 15.086969°E), from a depth of about 8 m over a sandy bottom (Fig. 1). The individual was caught jointly with the following species: Mullus barbatus, Lithognathus mormyrus (Linnaeus, 1758), Diplodus annularis (Linnaeus, 1758), and Boops boops (Linnaeus, 1758). The fisherman reported that, during the fishing operations, he was intrigued by the appearance of the captured individual of U. pori, since he had never observed such a species before; hence, he photographed the live specimen and released it.
Four days later, on 25 May 2017, a second specimen of the same species was captured in the same area, at a distance of just a few hundred metres away from the first collection site. This specimen was retained. The fresh specimen (Fig. 2) was measured, weighed, photographed, and identified according to the characteristics listed for the species by Golani et al. (2006).
Morphometric measures taken for the specimen are presented in Table 2. The meristic data for the same specimen are the following: dorsal fins (D1 + D2) VII + 9; pelvic fin I + 5; pectoral fin 13; anal fin I + 7.
The fresh specimen exhibited the following live colouration: back and sides mottled, brown-reddish. Belly whitish. Upper lobe of caudal fin with a number of reddishbrown bars separated by a white interspace. Lower lobe with a number of bars of the same colour.
The specimen was preserved in formaldehyde solution and is currently archived within the fish collection of the Museo di Storia Naturale di Comiso (Province of Ragusa), with the catalogue number MSNC 4552.
This capture actually documents the first record of Upeneus pori in Italian waters. Its occurrence in the Ionian waters of Sicily may constitute the initial phase of expansion of its distribution from Tunisia, where it is established (Ounifi-Ben Amor et al. 2016). This Lessepsian migrant species is one of the most successful colonizers of the Mediterranean, but, at present, there is scant information concerning its establishment in this new region of the basin-the central Mediterranean.
To date, within Tunisian, Maltese, and Italian waters, a total of thirty-three fish species of Indo-Pacific, Indian Ocean, Red Sea, and Pacific Ocean origin has been recorded. Independently of their vector of introduction to the central Mediterranean, twenty-two non-indigenous fish species of the above-mentioned origin have been recorded to date in Tunisia (Boussellaa et al. 2016 -Brunner, 1940; and the presently reported U. pori. The above nine Lessepsian species reported from Sicily and Lampedusa represent 10% of the Lessepsian migrant fish species recorded so far in the Mediterranean (102 species up to the end of 2016; Corsini-Foka et al. 2017) and this number is expected to increase, since, as assessed by Golani (2010), "once a Lessepsian migrant has arrived into the Mediterranean and established a sustainable population, there are no significant physical barriers preventing its westward dispersal".
Upeneus pori co-occurs with two other mullid species of great commercial importance in the Mediterranean, especially for the trawling industry-Mullus barbatus and Mullus surmuletus-and thus this finding is interesting since it is a call for a greater monitoring effort of Mediterranean populations of the new arrival. The authors of this study are not in a position to state whether the two  U. pori records documented in this study actually refer to the same individual or to two different individuals. If the latter is the case, this might signal a more extensive establishment of the species within the collection area than previously thought.