Gobius auratus Risso 1810

Gobius auratus Risso, 1810 (Figs. 36 and 40)—Golden Goby

Gobius auratus Risso, 1810: 160, type locality: Mediterranean Sea, France, La Fourmigue.

Size. Known adult size about 9 cm total length.

Morphology. D VI + I,13–15; A I,12–14; P 17–20. Medium-sized goby, with a moderately elongate body, laterally compressed, large head, and a short, slightly pointed snout. Caudal peduncle deep, but lower than body depth. Dorsal fins of similar height, the first dorsal-fin spines decreasing posteriorly, giving fin a triangular shape. Caudal fin rounded. Scales present on body and on predorsal area, usually visible on photographs at least dorsally (Herler et al. 2005; Renoult et al. 2022).

Live coloration. Body plain yellow (G. auratu s morph 1) (Fig. 40), except in northern Adriatic (Herler et al. 2005) where the yellow body is covered with numerous orange or red-brown dots forming longitudinal rows, including 3 or 4 rows below the lateral midline (G. auratus morph 2) (Fig. 36). Upper lip unmarked except the dot on the corner of the mouth (Fig. 33c) (Renoult et al. 2022).

Similar species. Morph 1 with no similar species in the Mediterranean. For morph 2: Gobius fallax and G. xanthocephalus.

Habitat. Infralittoral and circalittoral species known from 8–80 m depth on rocky and coralligenous habitats (Herler & Patzner 2005; Patzner 2021).

Geographic distribution. Northern Mediterranean, presently known from the Provence basin in France westwards (Herler et al. 2005) to west of Antalya, Turkey, Levantine Sea (Francour et al. 2007). In the Adriatic, a transition form between the ‘dotted’ morph (morph 2) and the ‘plain colored’ morph (morph 1) can be found in the Zadar region in Croatia (R. Pillon and M. Kovačić, unpublished observation).