Dawkinsia uttara, a new species of filament barb (Teleostei: Cyprinidae) from the Western Ghats of India

Title: Dawkinsia uttara, a new species of filament barb (Teleostei: Cyprinidae) from the Western Ghats of India

Creators: Unmesh Katwate, Deepak Apte, Rajeev Raghavan

Submitted August 21, 2020.
Accepted October 29, 2020.
Published online at www.senckenberg.de/vertebrate-zoology on November 20, 2020.
Published in print Q4/2020.

DOI: 10.26049/VZ70-4-2020-11
PDF/A 9.3 MB

Published by Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung

Date (Publication Year): 2020

Resource Type (General): TEXT

Resource Type (optional): Vertebrate Zoology, Scientific Article

Description (en): A new species of filament barb of the genus Dawkinsia is described from upstream regions of west-flowing Kajali, Jagabudi and Terekhol  river systems in the Konkan region of northern Western Ghats, India. The new species, Dawkinsia uttara is sister species of the widely distributed D. filamentosa. Dawkinsia uttara is diagnosed from its sister species, and other close congeners by a combination of characters including: 21 lateral-line scales; 4½ scales between dorsal-fin origin and lateral-line scale row; terminal mouth; posterior termination of the upper lip ending anterior to level of posterior nostril; cleithral spot small, confined to the scale below the first scale of lateral-line; no or miniscule maxillary barbels; caudal-peduncle blotch short, oval, covering 14th to 17th scales of lateral-line, and a unique colour pattern of caudal fin with a narrow elongate black subdistal band having maximum width of about one third of eye diameter covering the lateral margin of tips of caudal-fin lobes. Further, D. uttara differs from its sister taxon, D. filamentosa and other congeners by a raw genetic distance ranging from 2.1 – 19.7% in partial cox 1, and 3.2 – 21.6% in partial cyt b genes.

Key words: Dawkinsia filamentosa, freshwater fish, integrative taxonomy, Smiliogastrinae.

Citation: Katwate, U., Apte, D., Raghavan, R. (2020). Dawkinsia uttara, a new species of filament barb (Teleostei: Cyprinidae) from the Western Ghats of India. Vertebrate Zoology, 70(4): 717-730. https://doi.org/10.26049/VZ70-4-2020-11