The identity and distribution of Bhavania annandalei Hora, 1920 (Cypriniformes: Balitoridae), a hillstream loach endemic to the Western Ghats of India

Main Article Content

Remya L. Sundar
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4679-5828
V.K. Anoop
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4500-4972
Arya Sidharthan
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4398-1895
Neelesh Dahanukar
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7162-9023
Rajeev Raghavan
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0610-261X

Abstract

Bhavania annandalei Hora 1920, is resurrected from the synonymy of B. australis (Jerdon, 1849) based on examination of freshly collected topotypic specimens.  The two species can be distinguished by a combination of morphological characters including low, dense, and sparsely distributed tubercles on dorsal surface of head and operculum, rostral barbels reaching anterior border of upper lip, rostral flaps between the rostral barbels fleshier, 11–12 scale rows above the lateral line, and caudal peduncle stout with its depth to width ratio less than 2.5.  The two species formed significantly distinct clusters in multivariate space.  Further, the two species have a raw genetic distance of 6.4% in the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit 1 gene.  The distribution of B. annandalei is restricted to the river systems draining the Agasthyamalai Hills, below the Shencottah Gap in southern Western Ghats, while B. australis occurs in rivers north of the Shencottah Gap. 

Article Details

Section
Communications

References

Anoop, V.K., N. Dahanukar., S. Philip., L. Thomas & R. Raghavan (2018). Phylogeny of the hillstream loach genus Mesonoemacheilus reveals widespread diversification through ancient drainage connections in the Western Ghats Biodiversity Hotspot. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 129: 77–84. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4683.1.8 DOI: https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4683.1.8

Chen, Y.Y. (1980). Systematic studies on the fishes of the family Homalopteridae of China III. Phyletic studies of the Homalopterid fishes. Acta Zootaxonomica Sinica 5: 200–211.

Chernomor, O., A. von Haeseler & B.Q. Minh (2016). Terrace aware data structure for phylogenomic inference from supermatrices. Systematic Biology 65: 997–1008. https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/syw037 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/syw037

Edgar, R.C. (2004). MUSCLE: multiple sequence alignment with high accuracy and high throughput. Nucleic Acid Research 32: 1792–1797. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkh340 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkh340

Fricke, R., W.N. Eschmeyer & R. Van der Laan (eds) (2020). Eschmeyer’s Catalog of Fishes: Genera, Species, References. Electronic version accessed 10 June 2020. http://researcharchive.calacademy.org/research/ichthyology/catalog/fishcatmain.asp

Hammer, Ø., D.A.T. Harper & P.D. Ryan (2001). PAST: Paleontological statistics software package for education and data analysis. Palaeontologia Electronica 4(1): 1–9.

Hoang, D.T., O. Chernomor, A. Von Haeseler, B.Q. Minh & L.S. Vinh (2018). UFBoot2: improving the ultrafast bootstrap approximation. Molecular Biology and Evolution 35: 518–522. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msx281 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msx281

Hora, S.L. (1920). Revision of the Indian Homalopteridae and of the genus Psilorhynchus (Cyprinidae). Records of the Indian Museum 19(5): 195–215.

Hora, S.L. (1937). Notes on fishes in the Indian Museum. XXVIII. On three collections of fish from Mysore and Coorg, south India. Records of the Indian Museum 39(1): 5–28.

Hora, S.L. (1941). Homalopterid fishes from peninsular India. Records of the Indian Museum 43(2): 221–232.

Johnson, J.A. & M. Arunachalam (2009). Diversity, distribution and assemblage structure of fishes in streams of southern Western Ghats, India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 1(10): 507–513. https://doi.org/10.11609/JoTT.o2146.507-13 DOI: https://doi.org/10.11609/JoTT.o2146.507-13

Kalyaanamoorthy S., B.Q. Minh, T.K.F. Wong, A. von Haeseler & L.S. Jermiin (2017). ModelFinder: fast model selection for accurate phylogenetic estimates. Nature Methods 14: 587–589. https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.4285 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.4285

Kottelat, M. (2012). Conspectus Cobitidum: an inventory of the loaches of the world (Teleostei: Cypriniformes: Cobitoidei). Raffles Bulletin of Zoology 26: 1–199.

Kumar, S., G. Stecher & K. Tamura (2016). MEGA7: molecular evolutionary genetics analysis version 7.0 for bigger datasets. Molecular Biology and Evolution 33: 1870–1874. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msw054 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msw054

Menon, A.G.K. (1987). The fauna of India and the adjacent countries. Pisces. Vol. IV. Teleostei - Cobitoidea. Part 1. Homalopteridae. Zoological Survey of India, Calcutta, 259pp.

Menon, A.G.K. (1999). Check list - Fresh water fishes of India. Records of the Zoological Survey of India, Occasional Paper No. 175: 1–366.

Nath, P., D. Dam., P.T. Bhutia., S.C. Dey & D.N. Das (2007) A new fish species of the genus Bhavania (Homalopteridae: Homalopterinae) from river Noadhing drainage, Arunachal Pradesh, India. Records of the Zoological Survey of India 107(3): 71–78.

Nguyen, L.T., H.A. Schmidt, A. von Haeseler & B.Q. Minh (2015). IQ-TREE: A fast and effective stochastic algorithm for estimating maximum likelihood phylogenies. Molecular Biology and Evolution 32: 268–274. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msu300 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msu300

Rambaut, A. (2009). FigTree, ver 1.4.3. Available online at: http://tree.bio.ed.ac.uk/software/figtree

Talwar, P.K. & A.G. Jhingran (1991). Inland Fishes of India and Adjacent Countries. In 2 vols. Oxford & IBH Publishing Co., New Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, 1158pp.

Most read articles by the same author(s)