Cobitis levantina Krupp & Moubayed, 1992

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 : 23-24

Cobitis levantina Krupp & Moubayed, 1992

( Fig. 16–17 )

Cobitis levantina Krupp & Moubayed, 1992: 14 , figs. 1–2 (type locality: Syria: outflow of Buhairat Hims near Qattina, 34.666 36.616).

Material examined. FSJF 2747, 6, 45–82 mm SL; Syria: Nahr al Barid at Nahr al Barid, 35.302 36.345.

Material used in molecular genetic analysis. FSJF DNA-1214; Syria: River Orontes at Al Ghassaniyya, 34.594 36.530. (GenBank accession numbers: KJ553104 , KJ553147 ).

Diagnosis. Cobiti s levantina is distinguished from other Cobitis species in the Asian Mediterranean Sea basin by a combination of characters, none of them unique. It is distinguished from C. evreni by having a black spot at the upper caudal-fin base (vs. lacking) and Z4 usually formed by a series of distinct blotches (vs. a dark-brown stripe reaching from above pectoral-fin base until anus or beyond). Some individuals of C. levantina have the blotches along Z4 partly of completely fused into a stripe.

It is distinguished from C. battalgilae by having a single row of blotches in Z4, blotches roundish, horizontally elongate or squarish anterior to the dorsal-fin origin, fused into a stripe in few individuals, not dissociated into a band of small spots or small blotches (vs. blotches in Z4 usually vertically elongate or squarish, often dissociated into a band of small irregularly-shaped blotches and spots) and no axially pelvic lobe or pad (vs. present at least in some individuals). In many C. battalgilae , the pigmentation in Z4 is not dissociated. Cobiti s levantina is distinguished from these individuals of C. battalgilae by having relatively large, irregularly-shaped blotches in Z3, often forming one marbled pattern with pigmentation in Z1 and Z2 (vs. a sand-like pattern of very fine spots and minute blotches in Z3, well distinguished from pigmentation in Z1 and Z2).

Cobitis levantina is distinguished from C. bilseli from the Lake Beyşehir basin by having two laminae circularis in the male (vs. one).

Cobitis levantina is distinguished from C. elazigensis by lacking a pelvic axillary lobe (vs. present) and by the pigmentation in Z3 present at least until the vertical of the dorsal-fin base (vs. Z3 unpigmented or pigmentation reaching from vertical of nape to vertical of pectoral-fin tip).

Distribution. Cobitis levantina is found in the upper Orontes River drainage in Syria and in the Litani River drainage in Lebanon ( Krupp & Moubayed 1992).

Remarks. Figure 16 (Orontes in Syria, close to the type locality) and Fig. 17 (Litani in Lebanon) show fishes with a quite different colour pattern. Already Krupp & Moubayed (1992) examined both populations and show a drawing of a Cobitis from the Litani, which agrees well with the one shown on Figure 17 . We cannot exclude that two species are involved, but we had no materials to test whether the Cobitis from the Litani in Lebanon is indeed conspecific with C. levantina . The description by Krupp & Moubayed (1992) include a drawing from a picture of the holotype showing an individual lacking the pigmentation in Z3. In all our materials of C. levantina , the pigmentation in Z3 is only absent in few juvenile, while the holotype of C. levantina is adult (74 mm SL). Individuals lacking the pigmentation in Z3 occur also in other Cobitis species and we might just have not examined enough specimens to find such individuals.

Molecular data ( Fig. 1 ) place Cobitis levantina in the C. linea species group ( C. linea , C. aliyeae , C. anabelae , C. elazigensis , and C. erkakanae ). Based on DNA barcoding it is well separated from all other included Cobitis and by a minimum K2P distance of 5.3% to C. elazigensis , also supported as two PTP entities.

See below for details to distinguish C. levantina from other species in the C. linea species group and from other Cobitis species found in the Asian Mediterranean Sea basin.

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 16. Cobitis levantina, FSJF 2747, left column from the top: males, 64 mm SL; 68 mm SL; right column from the top: 81 mm SL, female, 49 mm SL, juvenile; Syria: Orontes River.

FIGURE 17. Cobitis cf. levantina, AUBM OS3576, female, 64.5 mm SL; Lebanon: stream at Anjar, 33.758, 35.931. Photo: Michel Bariche