A pair of ichthyologists have described a new species of catfish from the family Akysidae.
Darrell Siebert of the Natural History Museum, London, and Heok Hee Ng of the University of Michigan described the new catfish as Akysis meridionalis in the latest issue of the systematics journal Zootaxa.
The new species was caught in the drainage of the Barito River in southern Borneo, and is believed to be the only member of the genus known from this location.
The small cryptically patterned catfish lives can be distinguished from other Akysis species by a number of different morphological and meristic characters, as well as by its colour pattern.
The species is one of the several akysid catfishes described by Ng this year.
For more details on the new catfish see the paper: Ng, HH and DJ Siebert (2004) - A new species of the catfish genus Akysis (Siluriformes: Akysidae) from southern Borneo. Zootaxa, 733: 1-8.