Solea solea (Linnaeus, 1758)

Iftime, Alexandru & Oţel, Vasile, 2025, An annotated systematical checklist of the Romanian ichthyofauna, Zootaxa 5654 (1), pp. 1-64 : 30-31

Solea solea (Linnaeus, 1758)

A native marine species, found sporadically in Romanian Black Sea waters, especially southern ones ( Nicolaev et al. 2004 [as Solea vulgaris ]; Maximov & Zaharia 2010 [as Solea vulgaris ]; Cocan & MireȘan 2018).

Fam. Sphyraenidae

Sphyraena sphyraena (Linnaeus, 1758)

A native marine species, very rarely found in the Romanian Black Sea waters ( Bănărescu 1964; Vasil’eva 2007; Radu et al. 2008; Yankova et al. 2014).

Fam. Xiphiidae

Xiphias gladius Linnaeus, 1758

A native marine species, formerly found sporadically in Romanian Black Sea waters ( Bănărescu 1964; Oțel 2007; Vasil’eva 2007; Yankova et al. 2014; Cocan & MireȘan 2018), but the population that used to migrate into the Black Sea collapsed in the 1970s. There are no recent records in Romania but the species has been recently recorded from Türkiye ( Di Natale 2021).

Fam. Carangidae

Subfam. Caranginae

Trachurus mediterraneus (Steindachner, 1868)

A native, marine species, found along all Romanian Black Sea waters ( Bănărescu 1964); but the stock has declined severely since the 1990s (Oțel 2007; Vasil’eva 2007; Yankova et al. 2014; Țoțoiu et al. 2018; Cocan & MireȘan 2018; Niță et al. 2022).

The Pontic population, most often treated as a subspecies, is sometimes split as T. ponticus Aleev, 1956 ( Fricke et al. 2025). Typical Mediterranean and Black Sea stocks apparently interbreed in the Marmara Sea area ( Dobrovolov 2000; Turan 2004), and a “giant”, nowadays absent Black Sea form may have been such a hybrid ( Dobrovolov 2000; Zuyev & Skuratovskaya, 2024). It is difficult, given the current data, to ascertain whether this hybridization is introgressive with some selection against the hybrids (as vaguely suggested by the extinction of the “giant” putative hybrids), and therefore the stocks may be distinct species, or intraspecific, with “giant” morphology determined by transient variations in food availability, as argued by Slynko et al. 2018; we follow the latter perspective.