Oxynoemacheilus freyhofi Jouladeh-Roudbar, Eagderi and Hosseinpour, 2016

Jouladeh-Roudbar, Arash, Ghanavi, Hamid Reza & Doadrio, Ignacio, 2020, Fig. 4 in Fig. 4 in Fig. 3 in Fig. 21. Sesarmops mora n in Paralbunea dayriti, Zoological Studies 59 (21), pp. 1-303 : 166-168

Oxynoemacheilus freyhofi Jouladeh-Roudbar, Eagderi and Hosseinpour, 2016 – Endemic ( Fig. 306)

Oxynoemacheilus freyhofi Jouladeh-Roudbar [A.], Eagderi [S.] & Hosseinpour [T.] 2016: 95; Type locality: Roudbar River, tributary of Bakhtiyari River, near Kazem Abad village, Lorstan province, Iran, 33°08'17.8"N, 49°40'43.9"E. Holotype: IMNRF-UT 1036–1. Paratypes: IMNRF-UT 1036 (3), 2036 (10).

Common name: Pr: Loch-e Freyhof, Sagmahi-e Freyhof, En: Freyhof loach, Bakhtiyari loach.

Diagnosis: Dorsal fin with 10 branched rays, forked caudal fin, with equal size of lobes, slender and compressed caudal peduncle, complete lateral line, very small or absent median incision in upper lip.

Meristic characters: D: 10, A: 6, P: 9–10, V: 8, LL: complete, SC: whole body, DP: absent, PA: present, SOG: absent.

Distribution: Tigris basin ( Fig. 307). Found in Roudbar River, a tributary of Bakhtiyari River. It is also widespread in the Sezar, Kashkan, Karkheh and Dez Rivers.

Taxonomy: Noemacheilus insignis euphraticus Bănărescu and Nalbant 1964 is described from Euphrates (Firat Nehri) Basin, Malatya, eastern Anatolia, Turkey. Freyhof et al. (2011) treat O. euphraticus as a synonym of O. argyrogramma . Jouladeh-Roudbar et al. (2016b, 27 Sept.) described O. freyhofi from the Karun drainage in Iran while O. euphraticus was regarded as synonym of O. argyrogramma based on Freyhof et al. (2011) findings. A few days after the describtion of O. freyhofi, Freyhof 2016a (2016, 12 Oct.) synonymed O. freyhofi with O. euphraticus without any explanation and/or examination of O. freyhofi type materials. Later Freyhof and Özuluğ (2017) try to explain the synonymy. They criticized Jouladeh-Roudbar et al. (2016b) for using molecular data from NCBI GenBank and not comparing O. freyhofi with O. euphraticus . Jouladeh-Roudbar et al. (2016b) did not compare O. freyhofi with O. euphraticus because at that point, O. euphraticus was regarded as synonym of O. argyrogramma (based on Freyhof et al. 2011) and Euphrates in Turkey and upper part of Tigris basin in Iran did not share any Nemacheilid species. Here, we examined type materials of O. freyhofi and topotyes of O. euphraticus , using Cyt b marker and morphological characters. Using the genetic material O. freyhofi and O. euphraticus are placed in different independent monophyletic clades. They also differ in morphological characters such as head length, pectoral fin length and osteological characters. Therefore, we consider O. freyhofi as a valid species.

Conservation: IUCN: Not Evaluated, PC: Least Concern. This species is widespread with no known major threat across their distribution range.