Generic assignment of Leuciscus kurui Bogutskaya from the upper Tigris drainage, and a replacement name for Alburnus kurui Mangit & Yerli (Teleostei: Leuciscidae)
Author
Freyhof, Jörg
Author
Kaya, Cüneyt
Author
Bayçelebi, Esra
Author
Geiger, Matthias
Author
Turan, Davut
text
Zootaxa
2018
2018-04-16
4410
1
113
135
journal article
26751
10.11646/zootaxa.4410.1.6
92d7eb5b-8a7c-4ab3-8f77-7beb54bee4c9
1175-5326
3066575
A7372470-5727-4E4E-967D-02AD42CB93DF
Alburnus selcuklui
, a synonym of
A. sellal
Alburnus selcuklui
was described by
Elp
et al
. (2015)
from the upper Botan River drainage in
Turkey
. The Botan is one of the major tributaries of the upper Tigris.
Elp
et al.
(2015)
distinguish
A. selcuklui
from
A. sellal
by having a rounded snout (vs. pointed) and very slightly projected lower jaw (vs. distinctly projected) and having 10–15 gill rakers (vs. 13–17). We examined 20 individuals of
Alburnus
from the
type
locality of
A
.
selcuklui
and found all characters largely overlapping (
Table 2
). The gill-raker counts between both species reported by
Elp
et al.
(2015)
are largely overlapping and we count 12–16 gill rakers in our specimens of
A. selcuklui
and
10–17 in
A. sellal
; the two species cannot be distinguished by this character (
Table 2
). Indeed,
Alburnus
from the
type
locality of
A
.
selcuklui
have a very short and round snout and the lower jaw is not as much projecting beyond the upper lip (
Fig. 6e
). But this character state is not unique to this population and has also been found in other, geographically very distant populations as for example in the Great Zab drainage in
Iraq
(FSJF 3685,
Fig. 6d
). We found no difference between
A. selcuklui
from
A. sellal
in any of the morphometric characters examined including the snout length (
Table 3
). In our molecular dataset, fish from the
type
locality of
A. selcuklui
(
Fig. 6e
) share DNA barcode sequences with
A. sellal
. Without any morphological and/or molecular characters available to distinguish
A
.
selcuklui
from
A. sellal
, we treat
A
.
selcuklui
as a synonym of
A. sellal
.