Endangered
Lethrinus mahsena
Lethrinus mahsena
Lethrinus mahsena is a ray-finned fish in the family Lethrinidae (order Perciformes), recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
Lethrinus mahsena has a body that may be yellow to greenish-blue or olive-grey, becoming paler toward the belly. It commonly has nine to ten vertical bars of colour that are yellow-green or brown and a horizontal yellow stripe lattice pattern. The base of the scales may be dark or even black.
It grows to a maximum length of 65 cm, but is commonly found at 35 to 45 cm.
Range and habitat
It has also been recorded southern Japan, Polynesia, the Seychelles, Cebu, Philippines, the western Indian Ocean, and the waters of Sri Lanka. It is found in coral reefs and the adjacent sandy bottoms.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
Lethrinus mahsena is known to feed on echinoderms (in particular, sea urchins), crustaceans, and other fishes. It is a non-migratory, reef-associated fish that has a high commercial value.
In crisis
Lethrinus mahsena has according to the available data undergone a 60% population decline over three generation lengths, measured over the 45 years between 1973 and 2018. It is exploited as very high levels throughout the overwhelming majority of its distribution, and it is extrapolated that the limited available data indicates its global status and the IUCN has assessed this species as Endangered.
Lethrinus mahsena is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Lethrinus mahsena, Wikidata item Q1047620. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
