A new species of hillstream catfish has been described from the waters of the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar, south east Asia.
Catfish guru, Heok Hee Ng, of the University of Michigan's Museum of Zoology, named the new species Amblyceps carinatum in a paper in The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology.
The new Amblyceps is known only from the middle part of the Irrawaddy River drainage, and brings the total number of Amblyceps described from Myanmar to three.
Ng says that Amblyceps carinatum can be told apart from other species by a combination of unique characters, including its long, low adipose fin, the smooth edges to its pectoral fins, its deeply forked tail fin and its uniform body colour.
The new fish also has a number of morphometric characters that allow scientists to differentiate it from other members of the Amblyceps genus.
The paper also provides new evidence to place Amblyceps arunachalensis into synonymy with Amblyceps mangois, and includes an updated list of the valid species remaining in the genus.
Heok Hee Ng published an article on keeping the hillstream catfishes of the Amblyceps genus in Practical Fishkeeping in December 2005.
For more details on the new Amblyceps see the paper: Ng HH (2005) - Amblyceps carinatum, a new species of hillstream catfish from Myanmar (Teleostei: Amblycipitididae).