A new record of Lagocephalus guentheri (Tetraodontiformes: Tetraodontidae) from the north-eastern Aegean Sea

The family Tetraodontidae (pufferfishes) consists of about 184 species (Matsuura, 2015), of which four are known as Lessepsian migrants in the Mediterranean Sea (Golani, Öztürk, & Başusta, 2006). Among the pufferfishes, the genus Lagocephalus is widely distributed in warm shallow waters of the world (Matsuura, Golani, & Bogorodsky, 2011); four species, namely L. lagocephalus (Linnaeus, 1758), L. spadiceus (Richardson, 1844), L. sceleratus (Gmelin, 1788) and L. suezensis Clark & Gohar, 1953, are well-known in the Mediterranean, especially in the eastern basin (Golani et al., 2006). Lagocephalus guentheri Miranda Ribeiro, 1915 is closely related to L. spadiceus and L. gloveri Abe & Tabeta, 1983 from the Red Sea. Distinguishing characters are given by Matsuura et al. (2011). L. guentheri has been reported for the first time from the Mediterranean Sea off Alexandria, Egypt, in 2015 (Farrag, El-Haweet, Akel, & Moustafa, 2016). We report here a new record from the Aegean Sea. On 1 December 2015, a specimen of L. guentheri (Figure 1) was captured by commercial bottom trawl (44 mm stretched mesh size) from Çandarlı Bay (38°53’N, 26°53’E, Figure 2) at a depth of 50 m. The specimen was fixed in 5% formaldehyde solution and stored in the fish collection of the Ege University Fisheries Faculty, Izmir, Turkey (ESFM-PIS/2015-10). Diagnostic features of the specimen were examined under a magnifying glass and all measurements were made with a digital caliper and are