 It is a round herring of the family Clupeidae.Until the 1980s in the eastern Mediterranean slender rainbow sardines were frequently confused with the rainbow sardine ("Dussumieria acuta").Wangratana (1980) demonstrated the differences between "Dussumieria acuta" and "Dussumieria elopsoides", while Whitehead (1985) and Randall (1996) showed that "Dussumieria elopsoides" does occur in the Mediterranean.