Traccatichthys punctulatus sp. nov., a new species of stone loach (Pisces, Nemacheilidae) from Guangxi, southern China

By

Qin, Zhi-Xian
Zhou, Jia-Jun
Du, Li-Na
Lin, Feng

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2025-06-02

Original Publication

Zoosystematics and evolution

Volume

101

Pages

1013--1021

Subjects

genetic divergence , morphological differentiation , species description , taxonomy

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sofia Pensoft

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/zse.101.146077

 

Abstract

Traccatichthys punctulatus is here described from the Liu-Jiang flowing into the Xi-Jiang of the Pearl River basin at Jinxiu County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, southern China. It is distinguished from all congeners by having a unique body coloration of a series of brown spots along the lateral line and dorsal-fin. Other diagnostic characters, not unique to this new species, are caudal-fin and lateral body colorations, and absence of pectoral-fin tuberculation. Its validity is further confirmed by its monophyly recovered in a molecular phylogenetic analysis based on mitochondrial COI and Cyt b gene sequences and species-level divergence between the new species and its closest relatives.