Esmaeilius sophiae (Heckel, 1847)

Remarks. Beckman (1962: 153) documented the occurrence of E. sophiae (as Aphanius sophiae) in the Orontes River; however, Syria is not within the species’ natural distribution. According to Gholami et al. (2014) and Esmaeili et al. (2020) this species is restricted to the Kor River basin of Iran. Possibly, this record pertains to P. orontis, a species found in the Orontes River drainage.