Clupeonella cultriventris (Nordmann, 1840)

Freyhof, JÖrg, Yoğurtçuoğlu, Baran, Jouladeh-Roudbar, Arash & Kaya, Cüneyt, 2025, Handbook of Freshwater Fishes of West Asia, De Gruyter : 72

Clupeonella cultriventris

Common name. Common tyulka.

Diagnosis. Distinguished from other species of Clupeonella in Caspian basin by: ● 49–62 gill rakers / ● ventral keel hard, scratching human skin / ○ body depth 18–25 % SL / ○ tip of pectoral pointed / ○ interorbital distance 16–18 % SL. Size up to 120 mm SL.

Distribution. Caspian, Marmara, Azov, and Black Sea basin. Lakes Sapanca and Apolyont. Caspian Sea and Lower reaches of rivers as Volga, Ural, and possibly Terek.

Habitat. Euryhaline, in coastal waters, lagoons and lakes, estuaries, and lower reaches of large rivers with salinity up to 13 ‰. At sea, pelagic. Spawns near estuaries.

Biology. Pelagic. Marine, landlocked, or anadromous. Lives up to 6 years. Spawns in open water late in evening in April–July at 10–25°C. Eggs pelagic, usually laid in 5 m deep with at a salinity of 0.02–15 ‰. Two spawning runs in Azov Sea,one in spring and one in autumn.Individuals migrating in autumn overwinter near spawning grounds and spawn in spring. Return to sea after spawning. Juveniles migrate to sea during first summer. Feeds on zooplanktonic crustaceans (copepods,mysids, cladocerans), following their daily vertical movements in surface layers at night, descending during day.

Conservation status. LC; very widespread and often abundant.

Remarks. Clupeonella muhlisi from Lake Apolyont in Western Anatolia and Caspian C. caspia were treated as separate species. We could not find diagnostic morphological or molecular characters to distinguish these populations from C. cultriventris . Therefore, they are treated as synonyms.

Further reading. Hoestlandt 1991b (biology); Kottelat 1997 (systematics).