The perciform genus Pristolepis has a highly-fragmented distribution in southern India, Indochina and the Sunda Islands. A new species from the Western Ghats mountains in southern India, which has been available in the aquarium trade as P. sp. ‘red eye’,  is described this week and published in the mega journal Zootaxa, bringing the number of officially-recognised species to four.

The genus is contained within its own family, Pristolepididae, which forms a monophyletic group with the families Nandidae, Badidae, Anabantidae, Helostomatidae, Osphronemidae and Channidae, these characterised by possession of teeth on the parasphenoid.

Pristolepis rubripinnis is named for the orange red colouration of its fins, and is currently known only from the Pamba and Chalakudy drainages in Kerala state, southwestern India. It’s easily  be told apart from congeners by presence of orange red pigmentation in the caudal-fin plus soft parts of the dorsal and anal fins, and yellow to orange pelvic fins. The discovery of this new species serves to highlight the ever-increasing biodiversity of the Western Ghats ecoregion with almost 190 freshwater fish species now recorded there.

For further information see the paper: Britz, R., K. Kumar, and F. Baby, 2012. Pristolepis rubripinnis, a new species of fish from southern India (Teleostei: Percomorpha: Pristolepididae). Zootaxa 3345: 59-68. The abstract is available here.