Cobitis strumicae Karaman, 1955

Freyhof, Jörg, Bayçelebi, Esra & Geiger, Matthias, 2018, Review of the genus Cobitis in the Middle East, with the description of eight new species (Teleostei: Cobitidae), Zootaxa 4535 (1), pp. 1-75 : 35-36

Cobitis strumicae Karaman, 1955

( Fig. 26–27 )

Cobitis taenia strumicae Karaman, 1955: 190 , fig. 4 (type locality: FYROM: Monospitovo swamp and Strumica River ).

Cobitis peschevi Sivkov & Dobrovolov, 1984: 1673 , fig. 1 (type locality: Bulgaria: Eleshnitsa River, a tributary of Kamchiya River).

Cobitis rhodopensis Vassilev, 1998: 280 , fig. 1 (type locality: Bulgaria: Biala River, a tributary of Maritsa River, downstream of Meden buk village)

Material examined. FSJF 1703 , 12 , 50–69 mm SL; Greece: stream Kompsatos at Polyanthos , 41.139 25.212 .— FSJF 1755 , 28 , 44–81 mm SL; Greece: stream Maritza at Kornofolia , 41.134 26.292 .— FSJF 2343 , 7 , 49–95 mm SL; Turkey: Çanakkale prov.: stream Koca at Bakacak , 40.204 27.086 .

Material used in molecular genetic analysis. ZFMK ICH-TIS 55817 & 55818; Greece: Strymon River near Amfipolis, 40.829 23.839. (GenBank accession numbers: KJ553048 , KJ553143 ).—FSJF DNA-301; Turkey: Çanakkale prov.: stream Koca at Bakacak, 40.204 27.086. (BOLD accession number: EUFWF4175-18).

Diagnosis. Cobitis strumicae is distinguished from all other species of Cobitis in the Middle East by having two brown blotches at the upper and lower margin of the caudal-fin base (vs. no spot or one spot). It is further distinguished from C. fahireae from the Aegean Sea basin, C. puncticulata from the Marmara Sea basin as well as from C. taenia from the southern Black and Marmara Sea basins by having two laminae circularis in the male (vs. one). Cobitis strumicae is distinguished from C. dorademiri and C. phrygica , both having two laminae circularis in the male, by lacking the pigmentation below Z4 (vs. present in C. dorademiri , blotches in Z4 often dissociated into a field of spots and blotches, especially in the female C. phrygica ) and having a bifurcate suborbital spine (vs. simple in C. phrygica ).

Distribution. Cobitis strumicae is widespread in the European Aegean and southern Black Sea basins, from the Struma River drainage to the area of Varna ( Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey), the Lakes Volvi and Koronia ( Greece) and the Danube drainage in Bulgaria. Cobitis from the stream Koca at the Biga Peninsula (northernmost Aegean basin in Turkey) are identified as this species.

Remarks. Molecular data ( Fig. 1 ) suggest that C. strumicae is not closely related to other Cobitis species having two laminae circularis except of C. afifeae described below and C. punctilineata known from the northern Aegean Sea basin in Greece. Based on DNA barcoding it is well separated from all other included Cobitis and by a minimum K2P distance of 5.3% to C. punctilineata . It is also supported by the PTP and mPTP delimitation approaches.

See below for details to distinguish C. strumicae from C. afifeae and from other Cobitis species found in the southern Marmara Sea basin. Cobitis strumicae is reported here for the first time from Asia. Its occurrence on the Biga Peninsula is no surprise as C. strumicae is well known from the adjacent northern Aegean and Marmara Sea basins.

Figures

FIGURE 1. Maximum likelihood estimation of the phylogenetic relationships based on the mitochondrial COI barcode region (TN93 model, discrete Gamma distribution for rate differences with 3 categories +G parameter = 0.3792. Nucleotide positions with less than 95% site coverage were eliminated, resulting in 590 analysed positions. Numbers of major nodes indicate bootstrap values from 1000 pseudoreplicates from the ML, NJ and MP method. A star denotes highest possible support from all three methods. Solid bars right to the specimen labels indicate species delimitation results from PTP followed by the results of the mPTP approach as dashed bars. Except to the outgroups and the branch to the right part of the figure, the tree is drawn to scale with branch lengths depicting number of substitutions per site.

FIGURE 26. Cobitis strumicae, from the top: FSJF 2343, females, 94 mm SL, 85 mm SL, 69 mm SL; Turkey: stream Koca.

FIGURE 27. Cobitis strumicae, FSJF 2343, female, 85 mm SL; Turkey: stream Koca.