Lutjanus sebae
species of fish
Lutjanus sebae, also known as red emperor, emperor red snapper, emperor snapper, government bream, king snapper, queenfish or red kelp, is a species of marine ray-finned fish, a snapper belonging to the family Lutjanidae. It is native to the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific Ocean.
Taxonomy
Lutjanus sebae was first formally described in 1816 as Diacope sebae by the French zoologist Georges Cuvier, Cuvier did not give a type locality but it is thought to be either the Coromandel Coast of India or so where in Indonesia. The specific name honours Albertus Seba, a Dutch pharmacist, zoologist and natural history collector, who published a Thesaurus of animal specimens with beautiful engravings in 1734. This included examples of marine life from the Indo-Pacific, including an illustration of the emperor red snapper.
Description
Lutjanus sebae has a very deep body, its standard length being just over twice its depth. The forehead is steeply sloped, the snout has a straight or convex upper profile and the knob and incision on the preopercle are moderately developed. The vomerine teeth are arranged in a crescent shaped or triangular patch with no rearwards extension and there no teeth on the smooth tongue. The dorsal fin has 11 spines and 15-16 soft rays and the anal fin has 3 spines and 10 soft rays, the rear of the dorsal and anal fins is very pointed. The pectoral fins contain 17 rays and the caudal fin is weakly forked.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Lutjanus sebae” is species of fish. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Lutjanus, sebae and species, not as a finished interpretation.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1935366. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1816 and 1734.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lutjanus sebae” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.