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Take a look at this photo from the Catelog, labeled as Glyptothorax tuberculatus:


Now look at this picture taken by us in Kolkata and identified by Heok Hee as an undescribed species in the family Eresthidae:


The two fish are identical. So which ID is correct?

Dinyar

Fishbase considers Glyptothorax tuberculatus a junior synonym of Pseudolaguvia tuberculatus, the former a Sisorid and the latter an Eresthid.

http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/Species ... berculatus

This page lists the distribution of P. tuberculatus as Myanmar, whereas the fish we photographed was apparently caught in Bengal.

We looked at these fish quite closely and did not notice a thoracic sucker.

The preponderance of evidence suggests to me that Heok Hee was right in calling this fish an unidentified species, either in the hitherto monotypic Pseudolaguvia or in a new genus.

While we are on this subject, Heok Hee, what differentiates Sisoridae from Erethistidae?

Dinyar

I identified the fish in the Cat-eLog as G. tuberculatus from a picture that Dave Rinaldo sent me at that time because I was aware that Pseudolaguvia was being considered synonymous with Glyptothorax (at least by Carl Ferraris). Now it seems that Pseudolaguvia is valid after all (the correct species name should thus be P. tuberculata).

The fish is most likely an undescribed species because P. tuberculata comes from Myanmar, and I am aware that two more species are being described from Myanmar.

As for the diffeences between the Sisoridae and the Erethistidae, the differences are largely osteological, I believe. Not sure if all of them are internal, but I will check and see.

While we're on the subject of Glyptothorax, what is the size range of the genus? I recall how shocked I was to see Rusty's photos of the meter long Euchilichthys. FB lists G. coheni as reaching 90 cm. Is that a typo or do some Glyptothorax really get to these extraordinary lengths?

And what's the bottom of the range for Glyptothorax? ~4 cm?

The geographical distribution also seems pretty broad, stretching from China through Armenia. Are there any other Sisorid or Erethistid genera with an equally cosmopolitan distribution?

Dinyar

Hi,

shouldn't it be Pseudolaguvia tuberculata, though the gender of the genus name is feminin?
I kept P. aff. tuberculata for some time, and there were totally different from all Glyptothorax species i have seen yet. Unfortunatly very sensitive and they died shortly after i got them. They were imported by the Czechs (They also import by themselves, not everything is crossbred , so i don't know where they came from.

Greetings... Achim

what is the size range of the genus?

The size for G. coheni quoted in FB stems from a typo in Talwar & Jhingran (1991). The largest species of Glyptothorax is G. cavia, which reaches about 210 mm SL.
I haven't seen really small Glyptothorax species. The smallest is probably something like G. platypogon, which reaches about 60-70 mm SL.

Are there any other Sisorid or Erethistid genera with an equally cosmopolitan distribution?

Nope. Erethistids are restricted to India and Myanmar, and the next most widely-distributed sisorid is Bagarius (India-southern China-Southeast Asia). Glyptothorax may not be monophyletic, so there's a chance that its real distribution is much smaller.