A new species of catfish has been discovered by a team of ichthyologists from Rajiv Gandhi University (RGU) in West Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh. The catfish species has been named Creteuchiloglanis payjab. This is the second species of the same genus discovered here after a span of 48 years!
The team informed that the discovery of the new species was made in the Yomgo River, located at an altitude of 1999 meters at Mechukha in the West Siang district of the state.
This is the second species in the genus Creteuchiloglanis. The first such species was reportedly discovered at Kalaktang in West Kameng district of the state in 1966. Both the species of the genus were discovered in the Brahmaputra river basin.
The holotype (the original specimen used to describe a new species for the first time) and paratypes (any specimen deposited into a lab or museum collection to be used as the definition of the species) of the species were deposited and preserved in the Rajiv Gandhi University Museum of Fishes (RGUMF), and Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), Itanagar.
The species name ‘payjab’ is obtained from the local name for ‘fish’ in Memba, a colloquial term of the local ethnic group living in the locality.
The ichthyologists’ team was headed by D N Das of RGU and included Achom Darshan Singh, Rashmi Dutta, Akash Kachari, and Budhin Gogoi.
It might be noted that another fish species was discovered in September 2013 in the Siang River in biodiverse state of Arunachal Pradesh. You can read about that discovery here.
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