Monday 9 June 2014

A new species of Minnow from southeast Turkey.

True Minnows (Leuciscinae) are small freshwater Cyprinid Fish related to Carp, Barbels and Gudgeons. They lack teeth on their jaws, instead 'chewing' by opposing teeth on their gill rakers against  a chewing plate formed from a bony process of the skull, and also lack a stomach, with food passing directly into the intestine after chewing. They feed primarily on small invertebrates, and are found across North America, Eurasia and Africa.

In a paper published in the journal ZooKeys on 8 May 2014, Fahrettin Küçük and Salim Serkan Güçlü of the Eğirdir Fisheries Faculty at Süleyman Demirel University describe a new species of Minnow from the Asi River Drainage in southeast Turkey.

The new species is placed in the genus Pseudophoxinus, and given the specific name turani, in honour of Davut Turan of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan University, a noted expert on the freshwater Fish of Anatolia. The species is described from three specimens collected at İncesu Spring in Hatay Province. They are dark grey Minnows, 52.1-93.4 mm in length.

Pseudophoxinus turani. Küçük & Güçlü (2014).

See also...


Spotted Barbs of the genus Puntius are small Cyprinid Fish...


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