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Abstact Age and growth characteristics of crimson sea bream Paragyrops edita Tanaka in Beibu Gulf were studied through bottom trawling and gillnet fleets fishing from July 2006 to December 2007. A total number of 1155 individuals, ranging from 49 to 249 mm in standard length was examined. The age of the fish was determined from sagittal otoliths. One year growth was made up of one translucent and one opaque zone. A maximum likelihood estimation procedure was used to fit the Von Bertalanffy, Logistic and Gompertz growth functions to the length-at-age data. ARSS indicated that there were no significant differences in growth between sexes in the three growth models (P>0.05), and the Von Bertalanffy growth function L t =292.8{1-exp [-0.167(t+1.116)]} was selected as the most appropriate growth model according to Akaike's information criterion (AIC).

In this reply, we address the criticism directed recently to our work by Galil et al. (2016) dismissing the hypothesis that the Suez Canal can act as a revolving door allowing marine species to move both ways between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. We reiterate that the presence in the Red Sea of the Indo-West Pacific sea slug Chelidonura fulvipunctata Baba, 1938 is most parsimoniously explained by an invasion from the Mediterranean and highlight several recent studies combing morphology and molecular phylogenetics where established views about the presence of alien Indo-Pacific / Red Sea species in the Mediterranean were proven wrong. Caution is suggested when assuming the conspecificity of species between these realms based solely on external features.