Cobitis sipahilerae, Erkakan, Ozdemir & Ozeren, 2017

Freyhof, Jörg, Bayçelebi, Esra & Geiger, Matthias, 2018, Review of the genus Cobitis in the Middle East, with the description of eight new species (Teleostei: Cobitidae), Zootaxa 4535 (1), pp. 1-75 : 32-33

Cobitis sipahilerae Erk'akan, Özdemir & Özeren, 2017

( Fig. 24 )

Cobitis sipahilerae Erkakan, Özdemir & Özeren, 2017: 85 , fig. 2 (type locality: Turkey: Antalya prov.: Topçular District: Yediarıklar stream).

Material examined. FSJF 3107 , 9 , 59–89 mm SL; Turkey: Antalya prov.: stream Yediarıklar at Döşemealtı , 37.023 30.591 .

Material used in molecular genetic analysis. FSJF DNA-1539; Turkey: Antalya prov.: stream Yediarıklar at Döşemealtı, 37.023 30.591. (GenBank accession numbers: KJ553289 , KJ552783 ).

Diagnosis. Cobitis sipahilerae is distinguished from all other Cobitis species in the Middle East by having a plain, cream-brown back anterior to the dorsal-fin origin. In few individuals of C. sipahilerae the plain back is interrupted by 1–3 narrow, dark-brown, squarish bars (vs. back with 3–7 large roundish or ovoid, dark-brown blotches in other Cobitis species or a marbled pattern or blotches fused to a plain dark-brown pattern). Cobitis sipahilerae is usually further distinguished from C. phrygica by the flank pigmentation being clearly organised in the four Gambetta zones (vs. Gambetta zones often disorganised into many blotches and spots not following the four Gambetta zones), having a bifurcate suborbital spine (vs. external part simple), and from C. battalgilae , C. dorademiri and C. phrygica by having a dark-brown stripe in Z4 reaching from above the pectoral-fin base until the vertical of the dorsal-fin base or beyond (vs. a series of blotches or a field of blotches and spots in Z4).

Cobitis sipahilerae is further distinguished from C. phrygica and C. evreni by having a small, roundish or comma-shaped black spot at the upper caudal-fin base (vs. absent) and the pigmentation below Z4 restricted to a short line or few dots below on the caudal peduncle (vs. unpigmented in C. evreni ). Cobitis sipahilerae is further distinguished from C. levantina by having a dark-brown stripe in Z4 reaching from above the pectoral-fin base until the dorsal-fin base or beyond (vs. a series of distinct blotches in Z4, blotches very small and almost fused to each other in few individuals), blotches in Z2 usually fused into a bold, irregularly shaped and often interrupted stripe reaching at least to the dorsal-fin base (vs. a series of large blotches, well separated or fused into a marbled pattern). In some individuals of C. sipahilerae , Z2 is organised as in a row of blotches. Cobitis sipahilerae is distinguished from C. bilseli from Lake Beyşehir basin by having two laminae circularis in the male (vs. one).

Distribution. Cobitis sipahilerae is endemic to the stream Yediarıklar, which flows from the karstic spring Kırkgöz to the Mediterranean Sea west of Antalya.

Remarks. Molecular data ( Fig. 1 ) place C. sipahilerae in the C. simplicispina species group ( C. battalgilae , C. bilseli , C. dorademiri , C. joergbohleni , C. phrygica , C. pirii , C. simplicispina , and C. turcica ). Based on DNA barcoding it is well separated from all other included Cobitis and by a minimum K2P distance of 4.4% to C. bilseli . It is also supported by both, the PTP and mPTP approach as own entity.

See below for details to distinguish C. sipahilerae from C. turcica , C. joergbohleni and C. pirii and other Cobitis species found in the Asian Mediterranean Sea basin.

Cobitis sipahilerae is one of four freshwater fish species native to the Kırkgöz-Yediarıklar drainage. Others are Pseudophoxinus antalyae , Aphanius mentoides and an unstudied species of Seminemacheilus . All four species are endemic to this small drainage system and the adjacent Düden spring in Antalya. The occurrence of four endemic species (100% of the native species occurring there) makes the Kırkgöz-Yediarıklar drainage a site of major importance for conservation. A second case of such a small, but endemic fish community are the Sultan marshes from which we describe Cobitis joergbohleni below.

Figures

FIGURE 1. Maximum likelihood estimation of the phylogenetic relationships based on the mitochondrial COI barcode region (TN93 model, discrete Gamma distribution for rate differences with 3 categories +G parameter = 0.3792. Nucleotide positions with less than 95% site coverage were eliminated, resulting in 590 analysed positions. Numbers of major nodes indicate bootstrap values from 1000 pseudoreplicates from the ML, NJ and MP method. A star denotes highest possible support from all three methods. Solid bars right to the specimen labels indicate species delimitation results from PTP followed by the results of the mPTP approach as dashed bars. Except to the outgroups and the branch to the right part of the figure, the tree is drawn to scale with branch lengths depicting number of substitutions per site.

FIGURE 24. Cobitis sipahilerae, FSJF 3107, female, 69 mm SL; Turkey: stream at Döşemealtı.