Males of the new species possess 12-19 vertical bars on each flank. © Barbara Nicca

The undescribed killifish commonly referred to as Aphanius sp. ‘Namak’ or ‘Namak River’ in the aquarium hobby has been formally named. Continue reading »

The holotype of C. robustus was collected in 1954. © A. Lamboj

The African cichlid genus Congochromis was erected in 2007 to accommodate four species of dwarf cichlid of which three, C. dimidiatus, C. sabinae, and C. squamiceps, are former members of Nanochromis. They’re diagnosable by a combination of morphological and osteological characters, and all are endemic to the Congo River basin. Continue reading »

Two new killifish species are described in the latest volume of the journal ‘Bonn zoological Bulletin’ this week.

Aphyosemion pseudoelegans © Sonnenberg & Van der Zee

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© Ryan O’Donnell

The dwarf cichlid known in the aquarium hobby as Apistogramma sp. ‘black chin’,  ‘Schwarzkinn’, or ‘Pucallpa’ for almost 20 years has been officially described as A. allpahuayo in a paper published in the journal ‘Vertebrate Zoology’. Continue reading »

A new ‘tiger barb’, Systomus navjotsodhii, is described by prominent ichthyologist Dr. Heok Hui Tan in the latest supplement of the Raffles Bulletin of Zoology, the specific name chosen in honour of the late Professor Navjot S. Sodhi.

Live individual of Systomus navjotsodhii. © Heok Hui Tan

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Yet another new species is described in the rheophilic catfish genus Trichomycterus this week. T. argos is known from the Rio Doce watershed in the neotropical Atlantic rainforest of the Serra do Brigadeiro, Minas Gerais state, eastern Brazil.

The area is a national park and home to numerous endemic species although only around 5% of the original forest cover now remains. Continue reading »

The perciform genus Pristolepis has a highly-fragmented distribution in southern India, Indochina and the Sunda Islands. A new species from the Western Ghats mountains in southern India, which has been available in the aquarium trade as P. sp. ‘red eye’,  is described this week and published in the mega journal Zootaxa, bringing the number of officially-recognised species to four. Continue reading »

A recently-discovered member of the genus Dario with an interesting history is described from southern India in the journal Zootaxa this week.

This is the first record of the genus in southern India. © Hayath

New species Dario urops is named in reference to the conspicuous ocellus on the caudal peduncle, the presence of which distinguishes it from the other three members of the genus, and it can be further told apart by presence of a horizontal suborbital stripe (vs. absence in congeners), by lacking extended lappets on the dorsal-fin spines (vs. possessing), and unusual vertebral counts (14+14–15= 28–29 vs 11–13+12–14=24–27). Continue reading »

A new species of the genus Trichomycterus is described from the rio Uruguai drainage, Rio Grande do Sol State, Brazil, with a single paratype from the rio Paranapanema basin, São Paulo State. Both rivers are tributaries within the rio Paraná watershed.

Trichomycterus perkos is named from the Greek ‘perkos’ (περκὸς), meaning ‘spotted or streaked with black marks’ in allusion to its colour pattern comprising dark stripes in smaller individuals and a combination of dark stripes and spots in larger specimens. Continue reading »

Study reveals additional diversity in southwestern China.

Juvenile paratype of G. granosus © H. H. Ng

A paper investigating the identity of the catfish Glyptothorax zanaensis Wu, He & Chu 1981 is published in the latest issue of Zoological Journal of the Linnaean Society. The species was previously considered the only representative of the genus occurring in the upper Salween and upper Mekong river basins of southwestern China, but the former synonym G. longinema Li 1984 is redescribed and revalidated and two new species raised in the new study.

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