Pseudobagrus fui Miao, a valid species

[lfinley58]

Note: In the following it is noted that a petition has been made to the ICZN to conserve the name Pseudobagrus. Should this be successful it would negate the use of the name Tachysurus for these fishes as proposed by Ng and Kottelat. The abstract of the petition can be seen at http://www.iczn.org/BZNSept2008cases.html

Zootaxa 2072: 56-68, published April 14.
Pseudobagrus fui Miao, a valid bagrid species from the Yangtze River drainage,
South China (Teleostei: Bagridae)
JIAN-LI CHENG1,2, J. ANDRÉS LÓPEZ3,4 & E ZHANG1,5
1Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430072, Hubei Province, P.R. China
2Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100039, P.R. China.
3Museum of the North, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska 99775, USA.
4School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska, 99775, USA
5Corresponding author. E-mail: zhange@ihb.ac.cn
Abstract
Pseudobagrus fui Miao is a valid bagrid species that can be separated from all its congeners in having 27–33 anal-fin
rays. Among the species of Pseudobagrus, it forms part of a group of approximately 20 species putatively characterized
by having a smooth anterior margin of the pectoral-fin spine and short maxillary barbels not extending to the base of the
pectoral-fin spine. Pseudobagrus fui, together with P. nitidus and P. vachelli, can be differentiated from all other forktailed
species of this group by having no fewer than 20 branched anal-fin rays, the posterior end of the anal-fin base
posterior to the vertical through the posterior end of the adipose-fin base, and anal-fin base longer than the adipose-fin
base. It further differs from P. nitidus in having a gas bladder without beaded lateral and posterior margins, and from P.
vachelli in having short maxillary barbels not extending to the base of the pectoral-fin spine. Pseudobagrus fui is
currently known from the main stream of the upper Yangtze River and its tributaries, the Min River, Jialing River, Tuo
River, Wu River and Chishui River in Sichuan Province, Guizhou Province, and the Chongqing City. The identity and
nomenclature of Pseudobagrus nitidus is also discussed.
Key words: Taxonomy, Yangtze River basin, South China, Siluriformes, Bagridae
Introduction
Pseudobagrus, a genus originally erected by Bleeker (1859) to receive Bagrus aurantiacus Temminck and
Schlegel, 1846 from Japan, is a group of small- to mid-sized bagrid catfishes that inhabit streams and rivers
throughout East Asia (Ng & Freyhof 2007). There are roughly 40 recognized species in the genus including
seven which are in need of further taxonomic investigation to corroborate their validity (Eschmeyer 2008).
The known distribution of Pseudobagrus spans eastern Siberia, northeastern China, Japan, the Korean
peninsula, broadly across southern China including Taiwan and Hainan islands, and as far South to the Song
Vinh Thanh drainage in Vietnam. Recent taxonomic work offers an argument to place the genus Pelteobagrus
in the synonymy of Pseudobagrus (Ng & Freyhof 2007). This conclusion is concordant with results of a
phylogenetic study based on DNA sequence data (Ku et al., 2007). Further, the taxonomic consequences of
Ng & Kottelat’s (2007) designation of a neotype for Tachysurus sinensis Lacepède 1803 would mean the
reassignation of the species of Pseudobagurs to Tachysurus. Pending the outcome of a petition for the
proposed conservation of Pseudobagrus to the ICZN (López et al. 2009), we maintain the current prevailing
usage in this contribution as permitted by the Code. The majority of the species of Pseudobagrus are found in
Continental China. Among the 67 nominal species of Pseudobagrus, 50 are reported from this area (Ng &
Freyhof 2007; Cheng et al. 2008).