Colección Ictiológica de la Universidad Industrial de Santander, Colombia

Abstract

The ichthyofauna of the Magdalena River Basin is the best sampled of Colombia and yet, there is scant information about the fish of some of its drainages. That is the case for the drainages of Colombia’s North-East, where new species are being found during the first inventories of many freshwater sites. In this paper, we describe the database of the main freshwater fish collection of North-Eastern Colombia, the Ichthyological Collection of the Universidad Industrial de Santander in Bucaramanga. The collection started in December of 2002 and still active. Most of the specimens were collected in the Magdalena river basin system in the department of Santander. There are also specimens collected from the departments of Arauca, Atlantico, Bolivar, La Guajira, Meta, Norte de Santander and Valle del Cauca. Most of the specimens were fixed in formalin and preserved in 70% alcohol. There are currently 1665 records, corresponding to 9 orders, 33 families, 74 genera, and 100 species. The most frequent orders were Characiformes (38.4% of the records), Perciformes (31.4%), and Siluriformes (18.6%). Among the specimens in collection are the holotype and paratypes of  Astyanacinus  yariguies  and Gephyrocharax torresi  , and paratypes of  Trichomycterus uisae.