Review of Persian Paraschistura

The loaches of the genus Paraschistura are small, cryptic fishes widespread in the tributaries of the lower Tigris and in the rivers flowing to the Persian Gulf. We reviewed the Iranian species in detail and describe six new species.

Freyhof J., G. Sayyadzadeh, H. R. Esmaeili & M. Geiger, 2015. Review of the genus Paraschistura from Iran with description of six new species (Teleostei: Nemacheilidae). Ichthyological Exploration of Freshwaters, 26:1-48.

Fishes of the Mediterranean Biodiversity Hotspot

Almost all freshwater fish species of the Mediterranean Biodiversity Hotspot barcoded

Incomplete knowledge of biodiversity remains a stumbling block for conservation planning and even occurs within globally important Biodiversity Hotspots. Although technical advances have boosted the power of molecular biodiversity assessments, only North American and Australian freshwater fishes have been comprehensively barcoded to build up a reference library. Geiger et al. (2014) present an analysis of the first DNA barcode library for the freshwater fish fauna of the Mediterranean BH (526 spp.), with virtually complete species coverage (498 spp., 98% extant species). Overall, genetic morphological discontinuities suggest the existence of up to 64 previously unrecognized candidate species. The authors found reduced identification accuracy when using the entire DNA-barcode database, compared with analyses on databases for individual river catchments. This scale effect has important implications for barcoding assessments and suggests that fairly simple identification pipelines provide sufficient resolution in local applications. Geiger et al. (2014) calculated Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered scores in order to identify candidate species for conservation priority and argue that the evolutionary content of barcode data can be used to detect priority species for future IUCN assessments. Geiger et al. (2014) also present an up to date taxonomy of all species in the trees shown, suggest some taxonomic changes, revalidate several species and provide a new list of all Mediterranean freshwater fish species including a list of likely to be extinct species for the area. They also show that large-scale barcoding inventories of complex biotas are feasible and contribute directly to the evaluation of conservation priorities.

The paper is available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1755-0998.12257/pdf

Olease check also the associated materials!!

New Valencia described from Greece

New Valencia from Greece: Likely to be Critically Endangered and a high ranked EDGE species

The killifishes oft he family Valenciidae are the only fish family endemic Europe and the Mediterranean basin, and the recent description of a new member brings the total number of species to three. This trio forms the family’s only genus Valencia and all members are Critically-Endangered with very restricted natural ranges within which they have been subjected to extensive habitat degradation and competition with introduced species. Valencia hispanica is found only in a handful of localities along the Mediterranean coastline of Spain and V. letourneuxi occurs in few sites in northwestern Greece and southern Albania. Geiger et al. (2014) have calculated the EDGE scores for almost all Mediterranean freshwater fishes and Valencia’s represent the species with the highest EDGE scores. This means, that Valencia’s are within the group of species with the highest conservation priority if we follow the philosophy of EDGE. Valencia robertae immediately joins this group and makes the conservation situation for V. letourneuxi even worse, as one of the most important populations has now been split from this species. Valencia robertae was known from three sites but is actually known with certainty only from the lower Mornos River in mainland Greece. It is already extirpated in the Alfios River and might be extirpated at the type locality at the lower Pinios River in Peloponnes and the species is indeed described based on captive fishes from a stock collected in the 1990^th.

For further information refer to the full, open access paper: Freyhof, J., H. Kärst and M. Geiger, 2014. Valencia robertae, a new killifish from southern Greece (Cyprinodontiformes: Valenciidae). Ichthyological Exploration of Freshwaters v. 24 (no. 4): 289-298.

Four new Turcinoemacheilus described from Iran and Turkey

Nemacheilid loaches are still poorly known and many new species have been described in the last decades. Turcinoemacheilus have been recorded only a few times and records came from the Euphrates-Tigris drainage and all were identified as T. kosswigi. In 2011, a new species was described from the Himalaya demonstrating a much wider distribution range of the genus. In the Iranian Tigris basin, recent field investigations revealed that two ‘types’ of Turcinoemacheilus occur sometimes even in sympatry. Both ‘types’ can be immediately differentiated by colour patterns. A close examination of these ‘types’ revealed that they represent two new species, one of them is described as T. hafezi by Golzarianpour et al. (2013) and the other as T. saadii by Esmaeili et al. (2014). While working with the materials, it became clear, that two more new species are involved, described now by Esmaeili et al. (2014) as T. bahaii from the Iranian endorheic Zayandeh River and T. minimus from the upper Euphrates in Turkey.

Golzarianpour, K., A. Abdoli, R. Patimar and J. Freyhof 2013. Turcinoemacheilus hafezi, a new loach from the Zagroz Mountains, Iran (Teleostei: Nemacheilidae). Ichthyological Exploration of Freshwaters, 24: 41-48.

Esmaeili, H. R., Sayyadzadeh, G., Özuluğ, M., Geiger, M. & Freyhof, J. 2014. Three new species of Turcinoemacheilus from Iran and Turkey (Teleostei: Nemacheilidae). Ichthyological Exploration of Freshwaters, 24: 257-273.