Occurence of the Lessepsian migrant, Lagocephalus sceleratus (Gmelin 1789) (Osteichtyes: Tetraodontidae), in Iskenderun Bay (north-eastern Mediterranean, Turkey)

IntroductionThe silverstripe blaasop,Lagocephalus sceleratus(Gmelin,1789), belongs to the Tetraodontidae. Distributed in the Indo-West Pacific Ocean (Smith and Heemstra, 1986), primarily atdepths ranging from 18 to 100 m, it is also a reef inhabitant(Randall, 1995).Akyol et al. (2005) demonstrated its occurrence in Go ̈kovaBay,andBilecenogluet al.(2006)reportedthespeciesinthebaysof_IzmirandAntalya.ApreviousrecordfromtheMediterraneanSea by Mouneimne (1977) was a misidentification of aLago-cephalus suezensisspecimen (Golani, 1996).L. sceleratuswasreported from Jaffa along the Israeli coast in 2004 (Golani andLevy, 2005; Galil, 2007; Eisenman et al., 2008). The species wasalsorecordedinthewatersofCreteandRhodosin2003and2005(Corsini et al., 2006; Kasapidis et al., 2007). A recent recordfrom the northern part of the Edremit Bay, Behramkale coast(Tu ̈rker-C ̧akır et al., 2009), confirmed the presence of thespecies in the northern Aegean Sea.In this paper, we present a new occurrence and the associatedmorphometric and meristic properties ofL. sceleratusfromIskenderun Bay, eastern Mediterranean Sea, Turkey.