Alburnus selcuklui

Alburnus selcuklui M. Elp, F. Şen & Özuluğ 2015

Alburnus selcuklui, a synonym of A. sellal Alburnus selcuklui was described by Elp et al. (2015) from the upper Botan River drainage in Turkey. The Botan is one of the major tributaries of the upper Tigris. Elp et al. (2015) distinguish A. selcuklui from A. sellal by having a rounded snout (vs. pointed) and very slightly projected lower jaw (vs. distinctly projected) and having 10–15 gill rakers (vs. 13–17). We examined 20 individuals of Alburnus from the type locality of A. selcuklui and found all characters largely overlapping (Table 2). The gill-raker counts between both species reported by Elp et al. (2015) are largely overlapping and we count 12–16 gill rakers in our specimens of A. selcuklui and 10–17 in A. sellal; the two species cannot be distinguished by this character (Table 2). Indeed, Alburnus from the type locality of A. selcuklui have a very short and round snout and the lower jaw is not as much projecting beyond the upper lip (Fig. 6e). But this character state is not unique to this population and has also been found in other, geographically very distant populations as for example in the Great Zab drainage in Iraq (FSJF 3685, Fig. 6d). We found no difference betwe

Generic assignment of Leuciscus kurui Bogutskaya from the upper Tigris drainage, and a replacement name for Alburnus kurui Mangit & Yerli (Teleostei: Leuciscidae)