Diplecogaster umutturali

This species is distinguished from all its congeners by the following set of characters: snout small, its length 3.80-6.08 in head length); caudal peduncle short, its depth 0.77-0.96 in its length; eyes large, its diameter 0.59-0.88 in interorbital distance; anal fin short, its length1.92-2.35 in Y; upper attachment of gill membrane opposite to the 7th-8th pectoral ray; disc region A with 4-6 rows of flattened papillae across its width, 5-7 rows across width of region B and 3-4 rows across width of region C; anus is located closer to sucking disk than to anal fin (Ref. 117931).

Dorsal soft rays (total): 5 - 6; Analsoft rays: 4

Known from three discrete localities along the Turkish Levant coast; Akıncı Burnu (Iskenderun Bay), Kaş and Fethiye Bay. The type locality (Akıncı Burnu) is a broad cove, a pebble beach of ca. 1000 m long. Smooth pebbles with various dimensions (1x1 cm to 15x10 cm) extend from the high water mark to one meter of depth, as a large band throughout the coast. The deeper parts of the shore (>1 m) with dense rocky substrates encircled by fine sand. Large rocks were covered with two dominant algae, Jania rubens and Cystoseira spp., together with chthamalid barnacles. The holotype was collected from under a greyish flattened stone at a depth of 0.3 m, salinity at 39.2 ppt, bottom water temperature 28.5°C and dissolved oxygen 4.75 mg/l while the paratypes were observed and collected on coarse shell grits around the Posidonia oceanica (Ref. 117931).