Bahaba

Bahaba is a genus of marine ray-finned fishes belonging to the family Sciaenidae, the drums and croakers. These fishes are found in the Indo-West Pacific region.

Taxonomy

Bahaba was first proposed as a monotypic subgenus of the genus Otolithes in 1935 by the American ichthyologist Albert William Herre with its type species being Otolithes lini. In 1977 Ethelwynn Trewavas treated it as a valid genus in her paper called The sciaenid fishes of the Indo-West-Pacific published in the Transactions of the Zoological Society of London and most authorities now treat the genus as valid. Trewavas also stated that Herre's Otolithes lini was a junior synonym of Nibea taipingensis, which Herre had described in 1932. Bahaba belongs to the family Sciaenidae in the order Acanthuriformes. Some authorities place Bahaba in the subfamily Pseudosciaeninae but subfamilies are not recognised within Sciaenidae by Fishes of the World.

Etymology

Bahaba is the word used in the Samal language of the Sulu region of Mindanao in the Philippines for drums and croakers.

Species

The currently recognized species in this genus are:Bahaba chaptis F. Hamilton, 1822 Bahaba polykladiskos Bleeker, 1897 Bahaba taipingensis Herre, 1932

Characteristics

Bahaba is distinguished from other sciaenids by the form of their swim bladder which has unbranched horn-like or tube-like appendages which start at the anterior end of the swim bladder and are directed to the rear. The Chinese bahaba is the largest species, having a maximum published total length of while that of the chaptis bahaba is and the spine bahaba is.

Distribution and habitat

Bahaba is found in the Indo-West Pacific with one species in the coastal Bay of Bengal, one endemic to the coastal waters of southern China and the third in Southeast Asia.