Scientists have described a new species of bitterling from the Yangtze River in China.
Qing Yang, Bangxi Xiong, Qiongying Tang and Huanzhang Liu of the Huazhong Agricultural University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences named the new bitterling as Acheilognathus striatus in a paper in the latest issue of the journal Environmental Biology of Fishes.
The authors said: "It can be distinguished from all congeners by the following combined characters: a pair of relatively long barbels, slightly longer than half of eye diameter; dorsal fin with three simple and 8–9 branched fin rays, anal fin with three simple and 7–8 branched fin rays", as well as a number of colour differences between other Acheilognathus.
Acheilognathus striatus has a longitudinal black stripe extending from the base of the caudal peduncle which reaches the front end of the dorsal fin, which is broader in males.
The authors added that the stripe is "a scale distance between the longitudinal stripe and lateral line below the origin of dorsal fin; dorsal and anal fin margined with black band in males."
For more information see the paper: Qing Yang, Bangxi Xiong, Qiongying Tang and Huanzhang Liu (2010) - Acheilognathus striatus (Family: Cyprinidae), a new bitterling species from the lower Yangtze River, China. Environmental Biology of Fishes. 10.1007/s10641-010-9645-6