Fishes of Afghanistan; a revised and updated annotated checklist
Author
Çiçek, Erdoğan
Author
Fricke, Ronald
0000-0003-1476-6990
Author
Eagderi, Soheil
0000-0002-1134-0356
Author
Sungur, Sevil
0000-0003-4018-6375
Author
Coad, Brian W
0000-0002-7232-961X
Author
Hamdard, Mohammad Hamid
0000-0002-5915-6574
erdogancicek@nevsehir.edu.tr
text
Zootaxa
2023
2023-06-16
5305
1
1
69
http://dx.doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5305.1.1
journal article
56221
10.11646/zootaxa.5305.1.1
c640363c-14f9-4912-8a38-2948ab4946f1
1175-5326
8048564
55EB7903-BB1A-45F9-9660-16DAF957C67A
Pungitius platygaster
(Kessler, 1859)
Remarks.
This species was identified from
Odessa
and the side arm of the Dnieper River in Aleschki,
Ukraine
. It is distributed Eurasia into the Black, Caspian, and Aral Sea basins.
Afghanistan
is not included in the natural distribution range of the species. The presence of the species needs clarification.
The orders with the largest numbers of species in the ichthyofauna of
Afghanistan
are the
Cypriniformes
(88 species), followed by the
Siluriformes
(14 species), the
Anabantiformes
(4 species), the
Acipenseriformes
, the
Salmoniformes
, and the
Cyprinodontiformes
(3 species in each). At the family level, the
Cyprinidae
have the greatest number of species (36 species; 29.8% of the total species), followed by the
Nemacheilidae
(22 species), the
Leuciscidae
(12 species), the
Danionidae
(8 species), and the
Sisoridae
(6 species). Along the way, a total of 48 species previously reported from
Afghanistan
have been excluded from the checklist, either in the present study or in previous studies.
Out of 121 fish species distributed in
Afghanistan
, 44 species have economic importance, seven species have regional economic value, while 34 species have no economic importance. Although a total of 25 species are not of economic importance, they are caught and consumed as food by local people. Among the species that are generally found as exotic, eigth species are aquarium fish species while three species are potentially aquarium species.