[2] The body is greyish or red-brown, darker on the back, and covered with grey or reddish brown spots which go as far as the lower flanks but with no or a very faint lateral stripe visible in freh specimens.

[4] Upeneus pori occurs naturally in the Red Sea and into the north western Indian Ocean as far east as the southern coast of Oman.

[4] It is now very abundant in the eastern Mediterranean Sea where it was recorded as early as 1950, following its migration through the Suez Canal, and has spread recently as far west as Tunisia and Sicily.

Upeneus pori was first formally described in 1989 by Adam Ben Tuvia and Daniel Golani with the type locality given as Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba and was subsequently found to occur in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

[7] The authors honoured the hydrobiologist and biogeographer Francis Dov Por (1927-2014) of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in recognition of contribution to the study of Lessepsian migration, of which U.pori is part.