First record of Etrumeus teres (Clupeidae) in the central Mediterranean Sea by Manuela FALAUTANO, Luca CASTRIOTA & Franco ANDALORO (1) Cybium 2006, 30(3): 287-288. (1) Central Institute for Applied Marine Research, ICRAM, STS Palermo, via Emerico Amari 124, 90139 Palermo, ITALY. [mfalau@tin.it] RÉSUMÉ. - Première capture de Etrumeus teres (Clupeidae) en Méditerranée centrale. Il est fait mention ici du premier signalement en Méditerranée centrale de la shadine ronde, Etrumeus teres (DeKay, 1842), un migrateur lessepsien. Ses caractéristiques morphométriques et méristiques sont décrites. Ce poisson a été pêché à la senne, à trois miles à l’est de l’île de Lampedusa (détroit de Sicile) en septembre 2005. L’abondance de cette espèce augmente dans le bassin orien- tal de la Méditerranée et sa précédente capture avait été signalée au large de l’île de Rhodes. Notre capture représente le signalement le plus occidental en Méditerranée. Key words. - Clupeidae - Etrumeus teres - Central Mediterranean - Straits of Sicily - Lessepsian - First record. On September 2 nd , 2005, a specimen of a Lessepsian migrant, Etrumeus teres (DeKay, 1842), a species not previously recorded in the central Mediterranean Sea, was caught off Lampedusa Island, Straits of Sicily (35°29’21.0”N-12°39’42.5”E) (Fig. 1). This speci- men (Fig. 2) was caught at night by purse seine, at a depth of ca. 65 m, as by-catch of the fishery of mackerel (Scomber spp.), together with several specimens of Sardinella aurita Valenciennes, 1847. E. teres is a subtropical clupeid fish usually aggregating in large schools, also shoaling with other pelagic species such as S. aurita and Trachurus lathami Nichols, 1920, in the Gulf of Mexico (Yilmaz and Hossucu, 2003). It is a zooplanktivorous species, dis- tributed in the western Atlantic (Nova Scotia south to Florida, Gulf of Mexico, Venezuela and the Guianas), eastern Pacific (California to Chile including the Galapagos Islands and Hawaii), western Pacific (Japan and southern Australia), western Indian Ocean (Somalia to South Africa) and Red Sea, with immigrants into the eastern Mediterranean (Whitehead, 1985; Froese and Pauly, 2005). It was recorded for the first time in the Mediterranean as a single specimen in 1963 in Israel (Whitehead, 1963). Successively it has been found in Egypt (El-Sayed, 1994), Iskenderun Bay, Turkey (Basusta et al., 1997), Cyprus (Golani, 2000) and Rhodes Island (Corsini et al., 2005). Since 1997, E. teres has been caught in large numbers by purse seine along the south-eastern coast of Turkey, where it currently represents an important commercial fishery resource (Basusta et al., 2002). Its population is gradually increas- ing in the Gulf of Antalya (south-western Turkey) (Yilmaz and Hossucu, 2003). So far, four Lessepsian species of Clupeidae have been record- ed in the Mediterranean Sea and they are all confined to the eastern Levant Basin (Golani et al., 2002). E. teres, Dussumieria elop - soides Bleeker, 1849 and Herklotsichthys punctatus (Rüppell, 1837) have become common in Israel (Golani, 2000) and have reached the coasts of Turkey where the first two species became also commercially important (Basusta et al., 2002). Spratelloides delicatulus (Bennett, 1832) is only found along the Israel coasts where its population has greatly increased in the last years (Golani et al., 2004). Before the present record, none of the four afore-cited species has been recorded in the central Mediterranean Sea. The specimen caught in the Straits of Sicily is deposited in the Ichthyological Collection of ICRAM, Palermo (code ET-MF1) and its muscle sample is stored in the ICRAM alien species tissues bank (created in 2000 in the frame of the national project “Identifi- cation and distribution of non indigenous species in Italian seas”). At the time of the capture, the fish was dark blue on the back, silver along the flanks, and weighed 112 g. Its morphometric and meristic data are reported in table I and correspond to those reported in the literature for this species (Whitehead, 1985). In the past, E. teres has been confused with its congener E. whiteheadi, which is dis- tributed in the south-eastern Atlantic, and from which it is distin- guished by having fewer lower gill rakers (30 to 35) and less advanced pelvic fins (Whitehead, 1985). Because of the fortuity of this finding, that occurred during the Figure 1. - Map showing capture site of Etrumeus teres. [Carte indiquant le lieu de capture d’Etrumeus teres.] Figure 2. - Etrumeus teres caught off Lampedusa Island (Straits of Sicily). [Etrumeus teres capturé au large de l’île Lampedusa (détroit de Sicile).]