Argyrops spinifer
species of fish
Argyrops spinifer, the king soldierbream, Bowen snapper, long-spined red bream, longfin snapper, longspine seabream and red bokako, It is a species of marine ray-finned fish belonging to the family Sparidae. This species is found in the Indian Ocean.
Taxonomy
Argyrops spinifer was first formally described as Sparus spinifer in 1775 by the Swedish-speaking Finnish naturalist and explorer Peter Forsskål with its type locality given as Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. In 1839 William Swainson proposed a new monotypic subgenus, Argyrops of Chrysophrys for this species, so this species is the type species of the genus Argyrops. Argyrops bleekeri of Australia and the Western Pacific has been considered to be conspecific with this species but they are now regarded as valid separate species. This species forms a species complex with A. flavops, described in 2018 from the Arabian Sea. The genus Argyrops is placed in the family Sparidae within the order Spariformes by the 5th edition of Fishes of the World. Some authorities classify this genus in the subfamily Sparinae, but the 5th edition of Fishes of the World does not recognise subfamilies within the Sparidae.
Etymology
Argyrops spinifer has the specific name spinifer, which means "thorn bearer", which Forsskål did not explain, but it is assumed to refer to the simple, forward pointing first dorsal fin spine.
Description
Argyrops spinifer has its dorsal fin supported by between 11 and 13 spines, the first 2 spines being very short and located on the same dorsal pterygiophore, and 9 or 10 soft rays.
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This entry incorporates text from “Argyrops spinifer” 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.