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Alepes is a genus containing five extant species of tropical ocean in the jack family, Carangidae. They are commonly known as scads, a term applied to many genera of carangid fishes. Their body form, however, differs from these other scads by being much more ovate in shape, more similar to the larger jacks taken as game fish, although scads are generally much smaller. They are found in coastal waters throughout the Indian Ocean-West Pacific region.
Alepes was first created in 1839 by the English naturalist William Swainson, after he initially proposed it to be a subgenus of Trachinus, which he had created to accommodate Trachinus melanoptera, a species he had just described. Trachinus was invalid, however, as it was already in use for a genus of . This makes A. melanoptera the type species of the genus. The other species currently placed in Alepes were not directly classified in the genus, but were transferred from other, often distantly related genera. Many of these species have numerous . "Alepes" comes from the Greek word alepis, 'without scales'.
A single species has been identified from the fossil record; Alepes pin (Bannikov, 1985), described from the Lower Miocene in eastern Crimean Oblast. This area was once part of the Indian Ocean which extended well into Europe at the time.
| Australian waters, inhabiting the tropical north from Exmouth Gulf in Western Australia, north to the Northern Territory and east to Wide Bay in Queensland. |
| Tropical and subtropical western Indian Ocean and areas of the eastern Pacific Ocean, ranging from South Africa in the west to Hawaii in the east, including Japan and Australia to the north and south |
| Coastal waters in the Indo-Pacific, from Pakistan in the west to Japan and Australia in the east |
| Tropical and subtropical Indo-Pacific region. |
| Coastal regions throughout the Indo-West Pacific region |
The fish in Alepes are all predators, taking a range of crustaceans including , Decapoda, and shrimp, as well as small fish. At least one species shows a change in feeding intensity over the period of a year. The reproduction of most species is unstudied, except for A. kleinii. This species spawns on a single event over a period of a few months, releasing small transparent, pelagic eggs. Natural spawning behavior in the genus is unknown.
Distribution and habitat
The members of Alepes are all distributed in the tropical to subtropical regions of the Indo-West Pacific region. Their ranges overlap along the , and coastlines, although some are distributed as far south as South Africa and northern Australia, while others extend as far north as Japan. Two species, A. djedaba and A. kleinii are known to inhabit the Red Sea, and have passed into the Mediterranean Sea through the Suez Canal as part of the Lessepsian migration. They are all coastal species, not found in the open ocean.
Relationship to humans
The species of Alepes are not of major fishery, although Alepes kleinii appears to be taken in substantial enough numbers in India to warrant extensive research. They are taken by a variety of fishing methods including hook and line, and a variety of fish net methods. Their flesh is of good quality, and some regions regard various species as high quality and market them fresh, or dried and salted. They are of no interest to angling, although occasionally taken as bait or bycatch.
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