Pristolepis pentacantha
Pristolepis pentacantha Plamoottil, 2014
First described in: Plamoottil, M. (2014). Pristolepis pentacantha, a new fish species (Perciformes: Pristolepidae) from Kerala, India. <em>International Journal of Scientific Research.</em> 3 (5): 552-554.
Pristolepis pentacantha is a species of fish in the family Pristolepididae described from Kabani River of Kerala, India. It can be distinguished from its relative species by the following combination of characters: eyes are larger and closely set, dorsal fin carries 15–16 spines and 11 soft rays, anal fin carries 5 spines and 7 soft rays.
The fish species was discovered by Mathews Plamoottil, Assistant Professor in Zoology at the Government College, Chavara, Kollam, from Bavali, near the Karnataka border, in January 2012. Based on scientific studies and comparison with other fishes of the same species found in Kerala, it was found that P. pentacantha was a new species.
Descriptions from checklists and floras indexed by GBIF
diagnosis
Two additional characters that were used to distinguish Pristolepis pentacantha from P. marginata were the absence of preorbital serrations, and a preopercle with 5 – 6 serrae (Plamoottil (A), p. 552). It is evident that Plamoottil (A) overlooked the presence of preorbital (lachrymal) serrae, which are present in topotypic P. pentacantha as well (Fig. 4. v – vi). In addition, Plamoottil (A) also miscounted the number of pre-opercular serrae in P. marginata as 18. Topotypic and additional specimens of P. marginata have only 3 – 12 pre-opercular serrae (n = 9). Other characters and counts considered diagnostic for P. pentacantha also overlap between P. pentacantha and P. marginata (see Table 1). Analysis of the size-corrected morphometric data of P. pentacantha and P. marginata show no significant differences (PERMANOVA, F = 8757, P = 0.4429) between the two, with both species clusters overlapping in the NMDS analysis (Fig. 5), indicating that the two species cannot be distinguished based on morphometric characters. Due to the lack of diagnostic molecular or morphological characters between the four- and the five-spined Pristolepis, we synonymize Pristolepis pentacantha Plamoottil, 2
Pristolepis pentacantha Plamoottil 2015, and Catopra tetracanthus Günther 1862: two junior synonyms of Pristolepis marginata Jerdon 1849
discussion
a junior synonym of P. marginata Plamoottil (A), and subsequently Plamoottil (B) suggested that Pristolepis pentacantha can be distinguished from P. marginata in lacking pre-orbital serrations, having fewer pre-opercular serrae, more anal-fin spines, and fewer dorsal-fin rays. An examination of fresh topotypes and museum specimens of both species, however, suggests that these characters are unreliable and do not diagnose the two taxa. For example, P. pentacantha was suggested to have 11 dorsal-fin rays (based on the holotype and single paratype) (Plamoottil (A, B )), but an examination of a fresh topotype and additional specimens (n = 6) from the same river (three representative specimens with the same genetic identity) reveals that the five-spined Pristolepis possess 11 – 12 dorsal-fin rays, a count that overlaps that in P. marginata (11 – 12; n = 23).
Pristolepis pentacantha Plamoottil 2015, and Catopra tetracanthus Günther 1862: two junior synonyms of Pristolepis marginata Jerdon 1849
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Every page naming Pristolepis pentacantha in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
From the GBIF Backbone Taxonomy and occurrence records (GBIF.org), with Wikipedia and the Source Library. GBIF species 8650044.