A new species of colorful snakehead from Meghalaya, northeastern India is distinguished from all its congeners by possessing a uniform bright blue to bluish-green body, bright-blue dorsal, anal, and caudal fins, submarginally black with white distal margin, series of brown to maroon-red, rounded, oblong or clover-shaped blotches or spots on dorsolateral, postorbital, and ventrolateral region of head, continued on body forming oblique pattern or randomly distributed. The new species superficially resembles C. pardalis and C. bipuli in appearance, but it can be distinguished from both in having brown to maroon-red, rounded, oblong or clover-shaped blotches or spots on head and sides of the body (vs. possession of well-defined, black to brown, rounded to oblong spots), fewer pre-dorsal scales (7 vs. 8–9), more caudal-fin rays (15 vs. 13), and more vertebrae (49 vs. 45). The new species differs from both C. pardalis and C. bipuli by Kimura's two-parameter (K2P) distance of 4.2–4.8 and 4.9–6.0% in the coxI gene sequence. A key to the snakehead Gachua group of the Eastern Himalayan region is provided herein.
BioOne.org will be down briefly for maintenance on 17 December 2024 between 18:00-22:00 Pacific Time US. We apologize for any inconvenience.
How to translate text using browser tools
23 December 2020
A New Species of Snakehead (Teleostei: Channidae) from East Khasi Hills, Meghalaya, Northeastern India
Jayasimhan Praveenraj,
Tejas Thackeray,
Sadokpam Gojendro Singh,
Arumugam Uma,
N. Moulitharan,
Bankit K. Mukhim
ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE
