Cobitis faridpaki Mousavi-Sabet

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 : 22

Cobitis faridpaki Mousavi-Sabet , Vasil’eva, Vatandoust & Vasil’ev, 2011

( Fig. 14 )

Cobitis faridpaki Mousavi-Sabet , Vasil’eva, Vatandoust & Vasil’ev, 2011: 928, figs. 3–4 (type locality: Iran: Mazandaran region: Siah River, 36°26'85.05" N 52°56' 70.08"E).

Cobitis keyvani Mousavi-Sabet, Yerli, Vatandoust, Özeren & Moradkhani, 2012: 8 , figs. 3–4 (type locality: Iran: Mazandaran Province: stream Keselian, Talar River drainage, southeast of Caspian Sea basin, 36°11'74.09" N 53°00' 92.01"E).

Material examined. FSJF 2195 , 20 , 43–76 mm SL; Iran: Mazandaran prov.: Tajan River below Shahid dam about 30 km south of Sari , 36.280 53.203 .

Material used in molecular genetic analysis. FSJF DNA-150 ; Iran: Mazandaran prov.: River Tajan below Shahid dam about 30 km south of Sari , 36.281 53.238. (GenBank accession number: KP 050508 ) .— FSJF DNA 2714 ; Iran: estuary of a small stream in Amirabad , 36.609 52.164 ( BOLD accession number: EUFWF 2715-18 ) .— FSJF DNA 2715 ; Iran: estuary of stream Kheshtsar east of Amirabad , 36.618 52.198. ( BOLD accession number: EUFWF 2716-18 ) .— FSJF DNA 2716 ; Iran: upper reaches of stream Kheshtsar east of Amirabad , 36.595 52.205. ( BOLD accession number: EUFWF 2717-18 ) .— FSJF DNA 2717 ; Iran: small stream flowing from west to Alborz reservoir, 36.207 52.764. ( BOLD accession number: EUFWF2718-18 ) .— FSJF DNA 2719 ; Iran: small stream south of Kalaleh , 37.357 55.498. ( BOLD accession number: EUFWF2719-18 ) .

Diagnosis. Cobitis faridpaki is distinguished from C. amphilekta from the southern Caspian Sea basin by having a small focal zone in the sub-dorsal scales (about 1/10 or less of the maximum scale diameter vs. focal zone large, about 1/2 of the maximum scale diameter). It is distinguished from C. avicennae from the Tigris River drainage in Iran by having 15–30 dark-brown blotches in Z4 (vs. 12–17) and 3–4 rows of dark-brown spots on the dorsal and caudal fins (vs. 5–6) in individuals larger than 65 mm SL.

Distribution. Cobitis faridpaki is widespread in the eastern Caspian Sea basin, where it has been found from the Babol east to Gorgan River drainages. It has also been recorded in the Karaj River, a tributary of the endorheic Lake Namak.

Remarks. Molecular data ( Fig. 1 , Mousavi-Sabet et al. 2015 and Jouladeh-Roudbar et al. 2017) place C. faridpaki close to C. avicennae and C. saniae in the C. taenia species group. Based on DNA barcoding it is well separated from all other included Cobitis and by a minimum K2P distance of 2.7% to C. saniae , also supported as PTP and mPTP entity.

See below for details to distinguish C. faridpaki from C. saniae . The differences in colour pattern between C. faridpaki and C. avicennae described by Mousavi-Sabet et al. (2015) did not allow distinguishing both species, because C. faridpaki has been found to be much more variable in colour pattern than previously known. Cobitis keyvani is a synonym of C. faridpaki ( Jouladeh-Roudbar et al. 2017) . The findings of C. faridpaki in Lake Namak basin by Eagderi et al. (2017b) expand the distribution area of this species to the west, but we do not exclude that this population might have been introduced from the Caspian Sea basin.

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 14. Cobitis faridpaki FSJF 2195, male, 50 mm SL; Iran: Tajan River.