Abstract
Hoplias lacerdae was originally described from the rio Ribeira de Iguape, Iporanga, São Paulo State. The Hoplias lacerdae group is defined as containing generally large trahiras with the medial margins of dentaries running parallel to each other and lacking teeth on the basihyal compared to the H. malabaricus group in which the medial margins of the dentaries converge towards the mandibular symphysis and which have teeth on the basihyal. A taxonomic revision of the group based on meristic and morphometric data identified five distinct species: H. lacerdae distributed in the rio Ribeira de Iguape and rio Uruguai; H. intermedius from the rio São Francisco, upper rio Paraná basin, and rio Doce; H. brasiliensis from rivers of the Atlantic Coastal drainage from the rio Paraguaçu to the rio Jequitinhonha; H. australis new species, endemic to the rio Uruguai; and H. curupira new species present in northern South America, including the rios Negro, Trombetas, Tapajós, Xingu, Tocantins and Capim in the Amazon basin, upper rio Orinoco near the rio Casiquiare (Venezuela), and coastal rivers of Guyana and Suriname. A lectotype for Hoplias intermedius and a neotype for H. brasiliensis are designated.
Highlights
Species of the characiform genus Hoplias are distributed throughout of the many hydrographic systems of South America and are popularly known as trahiras, trairões (= big trahiras) or lobós
Many species are important in subsistence and commercial fisheries in various regions of Brazil and other South American countries (Goulding, 1980)
Species of Hoplias can achieve considerable size, and H. lacerdae and H. aimara are among the giants of the group, reaching up to one meter in total length
Summary
Species of the characiform genus Hoplias are distributed throughout of the many hydrographic systems of South America and are popularly known as trahiras, trairões (= big trahiras) or lobós. Oyakawa (1990) used morphological characters to define three species groups in Hoplias, a practice done in other characiform genera such as Acestrorhynchus (Menezes, 1992; Toledo-Piza, 1996) and Astyanax (Garutti & Britski, 1997) One of these groups within Hoplias was informally called the H. lacerdae group, which can be defined by the absence of toothbearing plates in the fleshy tissue on the dorsal surface of the basihyal and basibranchials (i.e. smooth tongue) and by the medial margins of contralateral dentaries lying almost parallel to each other, resulting in U-shaped margin in ventral view The purpose of this paper is to review the species of the H. lacerdae group, redescribe the valid species and describe two new species of the group
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