This species can be distinguished from congeners inhabiting the Red River basin in Yunnan province, China, by the following combination of characters: no barbels; 46-52 lateral line scales; 16 circumpeduncular scales; pharyngeal teeth in 3 rows, 2.4.5-5.4.2; snout rounded, no secondary rostrum, no longitudinal…

Prior to its description, G. rotundinasus was considered to represent the congener G. gravleyi, but the latter is now accepted to occur only in the Salween and Manipur river basins. These two are separated from all other Garra species in China and Southeast Asia by possession of a weakly-devel…

Following Rainboth (1996) distinguishing characters for G. fuliginosa include: presence of rostral and maxillary barbels; a well-developed, trilobed rostrum; possession of 10 gill rakers on the lower portion of the first gill arch; no mid-lateral body stripe; 32-34 lateral line scales; body dark with random lighter scales in places.

Kottelat (2001) states that the species can be told apart from other Garra occurring in Laos by a combination of: snout with a secondary rostrum, proboscis about twice as wide…

Native to the Mekong river system in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia, including the Tonlé Sap basin.

Type locality is ‘Kemarat, Thailand’, which corresponds to the Mekoong River in Khemmarat district, Ubon Ratchathani province, northeastern Thailand.

This species can be told apart from Indian congeners by the following combination of characters: no transverse groove or proboscis on the snout; tip of dorsal fin falcate; long axillary scale present at the base of pelvic fin, reaching base of last pelvic fin ray; 27–29 lateral-line scales, 10–11 regularly arranged predorsal scales; W-shaped black band across middle of caudal fin; presence of scales on the abdomen.

Substrates are generally composed of gravel, rocks, boulders or bedrock carpeted with a rich biofilm formed by algae and other micro-organisms.

At a habitat in the Mendawai river basin in central Kalimantan, H. borneensis was collected from a foothill stream running swiftly over a rock and gravel substrate with clear water of pH 6.4.

G. bispinosa can be distinguished from all other congeners in Southeast Asia and China by the following combination of characters: a conspicuous, quadrate, anteriorly-directed proboscis orientated ventrally against the snout and anteriorly adorned with a single, large, uniscupid, acanthoid tubercle on the distal tip of each lobe; snout with a deep groove across its tip to form a transverse lobe; 34-35 lateral…

This species is widely-distributed in the Mekong river system in Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, Salween and Ayeyarwaddy rivers in southern China, Myanmar, and Thailand, plus various smaller basins in Vietnam and China. It has also been recorded from the islands of Hainan and Hong Kong.

Type locality is given as ‘China: sent from Hong Kong’.

Found in various types of habitat but shows a marked preference for shallow, slow-moving and standing waters such as rice paddies and other temporally-inundated environments with dense aquatic vegetation.

E. caudiocellatus can be told apart from congeners by lacking a dark lateral stripe and possessing a prominent dark marking on the caudal peduncle.

In recent years a number of phylogenetic studies involving Esomus and its near relatives have been conducted and conflicting results published. For example a 2003 study by Fang et al. concluded that the genus is the sister group, i.e., most closely-related to…