HetereleotrisBleeker, 1874 is a moderately diverse genus of small-sized (standard length <50 mm), benthic gobies with cryptic behaviour, distributed in shallow coastal waters in the Indo-West Pacific. The genus was revised by Hoese (1986), with 13 valid species sharing several characters. The most important character is the synapomorphy
of the first gill slit closed by a membrane from the gill cover to one-half or more of the lower limb of the first gill arch, although this feature occurs in some other gobioid fishes (Gill & Mooi 2012). Only one species, H. poecila (Fowler, 1946), extends its distribution from the Indian Ocean east to the West Pacific. Gill (1998) described one additional species,H. georgegilli, from the western Indian Ocean. Hoese and Larson (2005) included the single previously described species of the genus Pascua,P. caudilinea Randall, 2005 from Easter Island and two new species from South Pacific, both morphologically close to P. caudilinea Randall, 2005, in Hetereleotris, and treated Pascua as junior synonym. Randall (2006) argued that Pascua is a valid genus, adding the two species described by Hoese and Larson (2005) as Hetereleotris to the genus. Recently a new species,H. exilis, was described from Japan by Shibukawa (2010). We provisionally follow Randall’s (2006) and Shibukawa’s (2010) opinions on the
validity of Pascua, expecting that more extensive research on this problem is needed to answer this question with more certainty. Regardless, the generic identity of the material in this paper matches Hetereleotrisin both concepts of generic limits with 15 (Randall 2006) or 18 (Hoese & Larson 2005) described species. Two small individuals of
an unknown gobiid species were photographed and collected by the second author from the Red Sea, Gulf of Aqaba, Egypt, Dahab, in November 2012. Examination of the material showed that these specimens belong to an undescribed species of the genus Hetereleotris, which we herein describe.
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