Pempheris malabarica

Randall, John E., Victor, Benjamin C., Alpermann, Tilman J., Bogorodsky, Sergey V., Mal, Ahmad O., Satapoomin, Ukkrit & Bineesh, K. K., 2014, Rebuttal to Koeda et al. (2014) on the Red Sea fishes of the perciform genus Pempheris, Zootaxa 3887 (3), pp. 377-392 : 387

Status of Pempheris malabarica

Koeda et al. (2014) regarded Pempheris malabarica Cuvier as a junior synonym of P. molucca Cuvier. As discussed by Randall & Bineesh (2014), the name P. molucca is based on a fanciful painting in Renard from 1719 and unavailable as a nomen dubium. Pempheris malabarica is a valid species, easily distinguished by having 42 to 48 anal soft rays and 65 to 75 lateral-line scales, the highest for these two counts of Indian Ocean species of the genus (see Tables 1 and 3).