A new species of Astyanax (Characiformes: Characidae) from the endorheic Río Salí basin, Tucumán, northwestern Argentina.
Author
Juan Marcos Mirande
Author
Gastón Aguilera
Author
María de las Mercedes Azpelicueta
text
Zootaxa
2007
1646
31
39
http://www.zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:D83848ED-9E15-4C2C-A228-0288B2CAFBB9
journal article
z01646p031
D83848ED-9E15-4C2C-A228-0288B2CAFBB9
[[
Astyanax
]]
In recent years, several species of
Astyanax
with similar counts of scales (33-36 on lateral line, 6-7/5-6 transverse) and anal fin-rays (iv-v + 21-23) to those of
A. eigenmanniorum
were described from eastern Brazil and northern Argentina (Almiron et al, 2002; Azpelicueta & Garcia, 2000; Azpelicueta et al. 2002a, 2002b, 2003; Casciotta et al., 2003; Casciotta & Almiron, 2004; Melo, 2001; Miquelarena et al., 2005; Miquelarena & Menni, 2005; Mirande et al., 2006). Several of these species, plus a few others, share the presence of gradually decreasing dentary teeth and variably expanded premaxillary teeth. This group of species is composed by
A. giton Eigenmann
and
A. hastatus Myers
from eastern Brazil,
A. ojiara Azpelicueta & Garcia
,
A. troya Azpelicueta, Casciotta & Almiron
,
A. leonidas Azpelicueta, Casciotta & Almiron
,
A. pynandi Casciotta, Almiron, Bechara, Roux & Ruiz Diaz
,
A. ita Almiron, Azpelicueta & Casciotta
from northeastern Argentina, and
A. chico Casciotta & Almiron
from northwestern Argentina. Additionally, all these species with the exceptions of
A. hastatus
and
A. ita
have hooks on anal, pelvic, pectoral, and/or dorsal, caudal fins.
The aim of this paper is to describe a new species from the endorheic
Rio
Sali
basin, northwestern Argentina, which shares with the mentioned species the gradually decreasing dentary teeth and expanded premaxillary teeth.
The genus
Astyanax
is currently diagnosed by a combination of several broadly distributed features among Characidae, and there are no studies supporting neither its monophyly nor the monophyly of some species complex within the genus. We assign this new species to genus
Astyanax
following its traditional definition (Eigenmann, 1917), considering that the new taxon shares some presumably apomorphic character states with species also assigned to this genus.