Thorogobius ephippiatus Benthic

Thorogobius ephippiatus (Lowe, 1839) (Fig. 5)—Leopard-spotted Goby

Gobius ephippiatus Lowe, 1839: 84, type locality: eastern Atlantic, Madeira.

Size. Known adult size to 11 cm total length.

Morphology. D VI + I,11; A I,10; P 17–18. Body relatively short, laterally compressed. Proportionately large head with a moderately steep snout profile. Anterior nostril tubular, with no dermal process from its rim. Caudal peduncle deep, but lower than body depth. Dorsal fins of similar height, the first dorsal fin with more or less rounded margin. The uppermost pectoral-fin rays are within the membrane, there are no free rays (Miller 1969; Schultz 1975). Scales present on body, usually poorly visible on photographs. Predorsal area naked.

Live coloration. Ground coloration grayish with a blue-green sheen on the back, covered with large and round dark spots (Fig. 5). Head, including the predorsal area, covered with brown to dark orange, smaller round spots, usually lighter and more reddish than the body blotches. Five large, dark brown, brown-purple to black midlateral blotches, circular in shape in the Mediterranean and 6 orange-brown blotches longer than deep in the Atlantic form (entering the Mediterranean just east of the Strait of Gibraltar). Above midline, 7-15 dark blotches smaller than midlateral blotches. First dorsal fin blue-gray with 2 brown transverse bands (sometimes faint or limited to brown spots). Dorsal, caudal and anal fins with a whitish to light blue margin (Schultz 1975; Kovačić & Svensen 2018).

Similar species. Thorogobius macrolepis (or occasionally orange-spotted T. ephippiatus).

Habitat. Infralittoral to circalittoral species, known from 2–156 m depth, on muddy sand, gravel or detritic substrata near crevices, beneath overhangs, in deep gullies or caves (Miller 1984; Stern et al. 2018; Renoult et al. 2022).

Geographic distribution. Northern Mediterranean, presently known from almost every rocky shore between the Strait of Gibraltar in Spain and the Strait of Dardanelles in Turkey, including the Ligurian, Thyrrhean, Adriatic (Schultz 1975, Kovačić et al. 2012a, Trkov et al. 2019) and Aegean Seas (Gerovasileiou et al. 2015), as well as the Levant basin eastwards to Cyprus and Israel (Stern et al. 2018). Probably present in the Black Sea; relatively widespread in the northern East Atlantic.