Reticulate Goby

In the Persian Gulf, substantial sea bottom dredging, resulting in changes of water flow and sedimentation rates, for industrial, infrastructure-based, and residential and tourism development along the coast have caused deterioration in most benthic habitats (Sheppard et al. 2010). Coral assemblages in the Persian Gulf, are estimated (likely overestimated) to have a total area of occupancy of 700 km². Al-Ghadban and Price (2002) determined that by the early 1990s, 40% of most of the Persian Gulf states' coasts had been developed in some way. It is not known whether or not G. reticulatus is directly affected by coastal development, but due to the large-scale of coastal development throughout the Persian Gulf and given the habitat preferences of the species, it is likely that it is impacted negatively in some parts of the region. As a result of increasing sea surface temperatures, coral bleaching events have also increased in frequency over the past few decades (Burt et al. 2014), degrading coral assemblages in the Persian Gulf, especially those found nearshore in the southern Persian Gulf. This is likely to also have a negative impact on this species.