Aphanius arakensis, a new species of tooth-carp (Actinopterygii, Cyprinodontidae) from the endorheic Namak Lake basin in Iran.

Azad Teimori,Neda Zarei,Zeinab Gholami,Bettina Reichenbacher,Hamid Reza Esmaeili

doi:10.3897/zookeys.215.1731

Abstract

A new species of tooth-carp, Aphanius arakensis sp. n., is described from the Namak Lake basin in Iran. The new species is distinguished by the congeners distributed in Iran by the following combination of characters: 10–12 anal fin rays, 28–32 lateral line scales, 10–13 caudal peduncle scales, 8–10 gill rakers, 12–19, commonly 15–16, clearly defined flank bars in males, a more prominent pigmentation along the flank added by relatively big blotches in the middle and posterior flank segments in females, a short but high antirostrum of the otolith that has a wide excisura, and a ventral rim with some small, drop-like processes, and 19 molecular apomorphies (17 transitions, two transversions) in the cytochrome b gene. It was suggested based on the phylogenetic analysis that the new species is sister to Aphanius sophiae from the Kor River and that Aphanius farsicus from the Maharlu Lake basin is sister to Aphanius arakensis plus Aphanius sophiae. A noticeable feature of the Aphanius diversity in Iran is the conservatism of the external morphology as well as morphometric and meristic characters, while distinctive differences are present in genetic characters, otolith morphology, and male color pattern. Transformation of the latter was probably driven by sexual selection.

Highlights

Aphanius is the only representative of the Cyprinodontidae (Teleostei, Cyprinodontiformes) in Eurasia
This study describes a newly discovered Aphanius population from the Namak Lake basin in northern central Iran (Fig. 1)
The new species is distinguished by the congeners distributed in Iran by the following combination of characters: 10–12 anal fin rays, 28–32 lateral line scales, 10–13 caudal peduncle scales, 8–10 gill rakers, 12–19, commonly 11–13, clearly defined flank bars in males, a more prominent pigmentation along the flank added by relatively big blotches in the middle and posterior flank segments in females, a short but high antirostrum of the otolith that has a wide excisura, and a ventral rim with some small, drop-like processes and 19 molecular apomorphies (17 transitions, two transversions) in the cytochrome b gene

Summary

Introduction

Aphanius is the only representative of the Cyprinodontidae (Teleostei, Cyprinodontiformes) in Eurasia. Later, the Kotschy’s itinerary in southern Iran in 1841 and 1842 was studied in detail based on botanical labels and it was clearly shown that collections by Kotschy studied by Heckel came from a lake called Maharlu (Edmondson and Lack 2006). This aspect is not in the focus of this very paper; we tentatively consider L. punctatus to be a synonym of A. sophiae until a proper examination of the extant syntypes of Lebias punctatus is done

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion