The rice paddy eel, Pisodonophis boro (P. boro), is of special interest because of its peculiar burrowing habits. P. boro penetrates the substrate tail-first, a technique common for ophichthids, but it is able to burrow head-first as well. P. boro exhibits three feeding modes: inertial feeding, grasping, and spinning. Rotational feeding is a highly specialized feeding mode, adopted by several e...

The broadly distributed Indo-Pacific moray eel Anarchias cantonensis (Schultz, 1943), heretofore treated as a single species, consists of three species: A. cantonensis, A. exulatus, a new species, and A. schultzi, a new species, based on geographic distribution, coloration, external morphometrics, and vertebral counts. We examined 112 specimens and determined that the true A. cantonensis is dis...

Gymnothorax baranesi n. sp. is described from three specimens collected in moderately deep water in the Gulf of Aquaba, Red Sea, Israel. It is characterized by irregular, pale, rosette-like spots on a dark background. The snout is somewhat slender. The intermaxillary teeth are arranged in one peripheral and one median row. The maxillary teeth are arranged in 1–2 rows, the inner row, when presen...

Cytogenetic studies in Gymnothorax funebris revealed a diploid chromosome number 2n = 42 (6 metacentrics, 4 submetacentrics, and 32 acrocentrics, FN = 52). The results obtained are novel and similar to those previously described for species belonging to Muraenidae family. The conventional karyotype is also novel and divergent from other species of the genus Gymnothorax, where a higher proportio...

A new species of moray eel from deep water in the Gulf of California is described. It is dark brownish-black with an overall pattern of pale irregular blotches; a short, broad head; wide, triangular jaws; deeply serrate and partially biserial teeth; dorsal-fin origin above and behind gill opening; and 10 predorsal, 66 preanal, and 134 total vertebrae. This combination of characters is not share...

A new worm eel, Neenchelys andamanensis, is described based on a single specimen collected from a depth of 520-531 m, Andaman Sea, eastern Indian Ocean. The new species is similar to N. daedalus, N. nudiceps, and N. similis in its total vertebral count and slender body, however, it differs from the latter three in having a shorter tail (60% TL vs. 70-76%), more numerous preanal vertebrae (77 vs...