Clupisoma

Carl J. Ferraris, Jr., 2004, A new species of the Asian schilbid catfish genus Clupisoma from Myanmar, with a redescription of Clupisoma prateri Hora (Osteichthyes: Siluriformes: Schilbidae)., Zootaxa 437, pp. 1-10 : 1-2

[[ Clupisoma ]]

From the earliest reports on the inland fish fauna of Myanmar, the schilbid catfish genus Clupisoma , as currently diagnosed (e. g., see Jayaram, 1971, 1999), was thought to have been represented by a single species. Studies by Francis Day (e. g., Day 1875-78, 1889) indicated that the single Myanmar species was Clupisoma garua (Hamilton, 1822) (referred to at that time as Pseudeutropius garua ), a species initially described from the Ganges River basin. Hora (1937) concluded that the species found in Burmese waters was distinct from that found in the Ganges basin, and he named the Burmese species Clupisoma prateri . Subsequent studies by Jayaram (1977, 1999) supported the validity of C. prateri and reported that species as the only Clupisoma in Myanmar.

Examination of several recent collections of fishes from Myanmar revealed two clearly-distinct species of Clupisoma . One species is distributed widely across the lower and middle reaches of the Irrawaddy River basin and in nearby rivers and the second appears to be limited to the upper Irrawaddy River, inasmuch as all of the known specimens are from the vicinity of Myitkyina, the capital city of Kachin State. The species of the lower Irrawaddy fits Hora’s description of Clupisoma prateri and the second species was determined to be unnamed. The objective of this paper is to describe the new species and provide a redescription of C. prateri , the only other species found in the waters of Myanmar.