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Grunts (family Haemulidae) are among the most commercially important fish in Bangladesh. This paper provides brief diagnostic characters of five previously reported grunt species: Plectorhinchus pictus (Thunberg, 1792); Pomadasys andamanensis McKay et Satapoomin, 1994; Pomadasys argenteus (Forsskål, 1775); Pomadasys argyreus (Valenciennes, 1833); Pomadasys maculatus (Bloch, 1793) and two new distributional records: Pomadasys guoraca (Cuvier, 1829) and Plectorhinchus macrospilus Satapoomin et Randall, 2000. The fishes were collected from the Saint Martin’s Island coral reef-like ecosystem and the adjacent sea of the Sundarbans mangrove forest of Bangladesh. The examined specimens were identified and diagnosed based on their morphometric characters and DNA barcoding COI gene. The new records of Pomadasys guoraca and Plectorhinchus macrospilus from Bangladesh greatly extend their distributional range in the Bay of Bengal. An updated checklist of grunts of Bangladesh is provided.

The presently reported study identified Saurida lessepsianus Russell, Golani et Tikochinski, 2015 from the west coast of India, which was earlier diagnosed as Saurida undosquamis (Richardson, 1848) due to their morphological similarities. Saurida lessepsianus is characterized by 48–51 lateral line scales, 44–47 vertebrae, 3–6 rows of teeth on tongue and anterior part of stomach black. The identity of this species was also confirmed by molecular examination (phylogenetic analysis of the COI sequences) and the study revealed a genetic divergence value of 0.08 between S. lessepsianus and S. undosquamis. Our study confirms the extended distribution of S. lessepsianus along the west coast of India (eastern Arabian Sea) from the Red Sea-Mediterranean Sea.