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Abstract Lizardfishes were represented in the Mediterranean Sea by one species; namely Synodus saurus. Ben-Tuvia (1985) reported the presence of Saurida undosquamis as an alien species in the Eastern Mediterranean coming to Mediterranean through Suez Canal. Since then, the landed catch of S. saurus started to decrease with increase of the catch of S. undosquamis. It was thought that the two species occupy the same niche and the latter was the main cause of the decrease abundance of S. saurus (the Atlantic lizardfish) (Ben-Tuvia, 1985) due to interspecific competition for space or food. Golani (1993) denied this point of view since S. undosequamis lives at depths deeper than S. saurus; indicating that no competition for food could exist between the two species. Along the Egyptian Mediterranean coasts S. saurus represents about one third of the lizardfish landed catch (Mahmoud et al., 2014). These two species represent 3.51% of the total landed catch from the Mediterranean. In recent years, S. undosquamis constituted a considerable amount of the landed catch in the Eastern Mediterranean (Bingel, 1987) while the Atlantic lizardfish was rarely found within the landed catch in this area. |