Author: Linnaeus, 1758
Dicentrarchus labrax Linnaeus, 1758
Status in World Register of Marine Species:
Accepted name: Dicentrarchus labrax (Linnaeus, 1758) (updated 2009-06-25)
Diagnosis: vomerine teeth in a crescentic band, without a backward extension on midline of roof of mouth. D 1 VIII-IX (X); D2 I + 12-13; A III + 10-12. Scales in lateral line 52-74 (mode 70). Colour: silvery, bluish or greenish on the back. Young with some dark spots on upper part of body but adults never spotted. A diffuse black spot on the edge of opercle. Size: to about 1 m SL.
Habitat: on various kinds of bottoms, also in brackish waters and occasionally rivers. Food: chiefly shrimps and molluscs, also fishes. Reproduction: January-March in Mediterranean, March-June in British Isles.
Distribution: North Atlantic from Norway southward to Morocco and the Canaries, also Mediterranean and Black Sea. Elsewhere, southward to Senegal.
Eggs, larvae and young stages. Raffaele, 1888: 14, pl. 1(1-4), 4 (1-2, 6) | Lo Bianco, 1909: 720 | Bertolini, 1933: 310, pl. 15 (1416), 19 (1-15) | Varagnolo, 1964: 256, pl. 1 (fig. 6) | Marinaro, 1971: 31, pl. 6 (fig. 1).
Otoliths (sagitta). Shepherd, 1910b: 292, pl. 1 (fig. 8) | Sanz Echeverria, 1926: 151, fig. 29; 1929: 73, pl. 5 (fig. 4-5) | Frost, 1927b: 299, pl. 5 (fig. 3) | Chaine, 1935: 81, pl. 6.