RESEARCH ARTICLE

Lutjanus arakan, a new species of snapper (Teleostei: Lutjanidae) from the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh, previously confused with L. lemniscatus

Mohammad Eusuf Hasan, Jean-Dominique Durand & Yukio Iwatsuki

A new species of snapper, Lutjanus arakan, is described from 16 specimens, 104–320 mm SL, from the Bangladesh coast of the eastern Bay of Bengal region of the eastern Indian Ocean. It has also been photographed at Ngapali, southern Rakhine coast of Myanmar. Lutjanus arakan is similar to L. lemniscatuss from the Indo-West Pacific with respect to juvenile coloration. However, it differs considerably in adult color pattern and, to some extent, in its narrower interorbital, more slender body shape, and a flatter snout-forehead profile. It possesses two dark-brown mid-lateral stripes on the upper half of the body, on both juveniles and adults: one from the upper end of the operculum to the end of the soft dorsal-fin base and upper caudal-fin base, and the other from upper middle of the operculum to the middle of the caudal-fin origin. In comparison, juvenile L. lemniscatus display a single, broad, dark, mid-lateral stripe from the eye to the caudal fin, preceded by a broad brown stripe from the snout tip to the eye, both of which disappear with growth as the color becomes mostly uniform grey-brown to silvery with yellow streaks. The ontogenetic changes in the color pattern of L. lemniscatus are presented and discussed along with a corrected count of pectoral-fin rays in the holotype. Comparisons of the mtDNA sequence of cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (CO1, the DNA barcode) for the L. lunulatus complex reveal minimum interspecific divergences ranging from about 4 to 5% between L. arakan and its closest congeners: L. bitaeniatus, L. decussatus, L. papuensis, L. lemniscatus, L. lunulatus, and L. semicinctus, all from the eastern Indian and western Pacific Oceans.

CITATION:

Hasan, M.E., Durand, J.-D. & Iwatsuki, Y. (2025) Lutjanus arakan, a new species of snapper (Teleostei: Lutjanidae) from the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh, previously confused with L. lemniscatus. Journal of the Ocean Science Foundation, 45, 7-35.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18073876

publication date: 27 December 2025