Ituglanis Costa & Bockmann

Rafael M. Campos-Paiva & Wilson J. E. M. Costa, 2007, Ituglanis paraguassuensis sp. n. (Teleostei: Siluriformes: Trichomycteridae): a new catfish from the rio Paraguacu, northeastern Brazil., Zootaxa 1471, pp. 53-59 : 53-54

[[ Ituglanis Costa & Bockmann ]]

Ituglanis was created by Costa & Bockmann in recognition of a small monophyletic group of species formerly included in Trichomycterus , a genus of the non-monophyletic sub-family Trichomycterinae. Ituglanis is a widespread catfish genus occurring in the main river basins of tropical South America (Costa & Bockmann, 1993).

It is hypothesized that Ituglanis forms a monophyletic lineage within a large trichomycterid clade containing the subfamilies Tridentinae, Stegophilinae, Vandellinae, Sarcoglanidinae and Glanapteryginae, the clade TSVSG as defined by Costa & Bockmann (1993, 1994), all sharing a reduced number of pleural ribs (i. e., one to six pairs) (Costa & Bockmann, 1993; de Pinna, 1998). Ituglanis has been placed in an intermediate phylogenetic position between the TSVSG clade and all other trichomycterids, thus considered to be important to understand the major morphological, functional and trophic modifications occurring in the specialized members of the TSVSG clade (e. g., the hematophagous candirus) (de Pinna, 1998; de Pinna & Keith, 2003).

With increased collecting efforts and a detailed taxonomic study, much reliable information about the genus has been published since 2000. Seven new species of Ituglanis have been recently described, including four adapted to cave environments (Fernandez & Bichuette, 2002; Bichuette & Trajano, 2004), Ituglanis nebulosus from French Guyana distinguished principally by the color pattern (de Pinna and Keith, 2003), Ituglanis macunaina described by a combination of characteristics but without any exclusive taxonomic character (Datovo & Landim, 2005) and Ituglanis cahyensis (Sarmento-Soares et al., 2006) , also from Bahia, but distinguished by many features. With the description of Ituglanis paraguassuensis the genus now comprises 18 species, a number that will probably increase in a few years.