Author: Linnaeus, 1758
Dentex (Dentex) dentex Linnaeus, 1758
Status in World Register of Marine Species:
Accepted name: Dentex (Dentex) dentex (Linnaeus, 1758) (updated 2009-06-25)
Diagnosis: upper profile of head regularly convex in adults, almost straight in the young. Slight hump at forehead in the oldest specimens. Gillrakers 9-10 lower, 8-9 upper. D XI + 11-12; A III + 7-9. Length of dorsal spines increasing to fourth or fifth then subequal. Lateral line scales 62-68 to caudal base. Colour: young greyish, dorsally blackspotted, pinkish at maturity, grey-blue in the oldest specimens; dorsal spots more or less shaded with age. Size: to 100 cm SL, usually 35-50 cm.
Habitat: inshore waters on rocky bottoms to 200 m, more common between 15 and 50 m. Young gregarious, the oldest solitary. Food: carnivorous (fish, molluscs). Reproduction: May (Mediterranean); gonochoric, some specimens hermaphroditic.
Distribution: Mediterranean, most common south of 40° N (Spain, North Africa); Black Sea (very rare); Atlantic from Bay of Biscay to Cape Blanc and Madeira, exceptionally to British Isles. Elsewhere, southward to Senegal.
Eggs, larvae and young stages. Holt, 1899: 714 | Lo Bianco, 1909: 714 | Ranzi, 1930: 407-416; 1933: 333, pl. 22 (fig. 1-4) | de Gaetani, 1938: 1-8, 7 fig. | Vodjanitzki and Kazanova, 1954: 266, fig. 18.
Otoliths (sagitta). Sanz Echeverría, 1926: 152, fig. 35-36;1929: 75, pl. 5 (fig. 10-11) | Chaine, 1937: 49, pl. 5.