A new species of twig catfish from the genus Farlowella has been described from Bolivia.
Farlowella alticorpus, a member of the suckermouth catfish family Loricariidae, was discovered in the Rio Coroico, a tributary of the Rio Beni in Bolivia, and has just been described in a paper by Michael Retzer in the journal Zootaxa.
Retzer says that the new species can be told apart from other members of the Farlowella genus on the basis of the following characters:
"Snout tip to mouth length 73-87% of pectoral fin length in adults, body depth 69-79% of pelvic fin length, body depth 49-53% of distance between pelvic and pectoral fins, head length 1.94-2.28 times length of snout tip to mouth, mid-ventral plates keeled, pectoral fins reach origins of pelvic fins, not having first anal and dorsal fin spines entirely darkly pigmented, anterior median lateral plates 14-16, posterior median lateral plates 16-18, post-anal plates 22-23, and abdominal plates 22-31."
The species is believed to be a member of the Farlowella nattereri group, which also contains F. isbruckeri, F. hasemani, F. jauruensis, F. odontotumulus and F. nattereri. With the exception of Farlowella gracilis, F. alticorpus is the only member of the genus that has five rows of anterior lateral plates.
The fish is wider and deeper than other Farlowella and has a shorter snout. It gets its name alticorpus from the Latin alto - meaning deep - and corpus - meaning body.
The species is currently known only from the type locality on the Rio Coroico, in the Rio Beni basin in La Paz State in Bolivia.
For more information on the new loricariid species see the paper: Retzer ME (2006) - A new species of Farlowella Eigenmann and Eigenmann (Siluriformes: Loricariidae), a stickcatfish from Bolivia. Zootaxa, 1282: 59-68.