A rare species of <em>Uropterygius</em> (Anguilliformes, Muraenidae) found in the stomach content of a Yellow-lipped Sea Krait from Japan

Check List 14(1): 163-166, doi: 10.15560/14.1.163

A rare species of Uropterygius (Anguilliformes, Muraenidae) found in the stomach content of a Yellow-lipped Sea Krait from Japan

Fumihito Tashiro^‡, Runa Tabata^§, Hideaki Nishizawa^§, Hidemichi Mitamura^§

‡ Maizuru Fisheries Research Station, Field Science Education and Research Center, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan§ Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

Corresponding author: Fumihito Tashiro ( fumihito.tashiro@gmail.com )

Academic editor: Zeehan Jaafar

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Citation: Tashiro F, Tabata R, Nishizawa H, Mitamura H (2018) A rare species of Uropterygius (Anguilliformes, Muraenidae) found in the stomach content of a Yellow-lipped Sea Krait from Japan. Check List 14(1): 163-166. https://doi.org/10.15560/14.1.163

Abstract

A single muraenid specimen (genus Uropterygius), recovered from the stomach of a live Yellow-lipped Sea Krait, Laticauda colubrina (Schneider, 1799), captured at Iriomote Island, Japan, was found to possess intermediate traits between 2 rare species, Uropterygius xenodontus McCosker & Smith, 1997 and Uropterygius golanii McCosker & Smith, 1997. The specimen is provisionally identified as U. xenodontus and is described below with its morphs, as an important addition to material of rare specimens of the genus in the western North Pacific.

Keywords

Uropterygius xenodontus; Uropterygius golanii; moray eel; fish biodiversity; Laticauda spp.; western North Pacific