New species of fish discovered in Kalpangi River

Itanagar: Researchers have discovered a new species of fish in Kalpangi River in Yazali under Lower Subansiri district of Arunachal Pradesh.

The new species, Garra Kalpangi, was named after the river from where it was discovered, officials said today. The team included K Nebeshwar from Manipur University, Kenjum Bagra Research Officer at Arunachal Pradesh Biodiversity Board and D N Das of Rajiv Gandhi University. The discovery of the new species was mentioned in an article published in the February, 2012 edition of the Journal of Threatened Taxa, a wildlife and conservation journal.

The cyprinid fish under genus Garra are bottom dwellers.

The genus consists of approximately 70 species in the region from Borneo, Southern China and Southern Asia through Middle East Asia, Arabian Peninsula and East Africa to West Africa.

There are altogether 15 valid species of Garra known from the Himalayan foothills and distributed in the Ganga, Brahmaputra and Chindwin basins in Northeastern India.

Including the currently described one, in Arunachal Pradesh there are nine species of Garra, namely, G lissorhynchus, G annandalei, G gotyla, G kempi, G lamta, G mcClellandi, G arupi and G naganensis.

In 2009, Bagra and his research team published a list of fishes of Arunachal Pradesh numbering 213 species in an international journal.

Since then, there has been addition of four more discoveries. (PTI)