Scientists from the Czech Republic, Russia, Slovakia and Turkey have described a new species of gudgeon from the Volga River drainage in Russia.
The new species is named Gobio volgensis (after the Volga River) in a study of the molecular phylogeny of the gudgeons (genus Gobio) by Jan Mendel and co-authors published in the latest issue of the journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution.
The authors studied the molecular phylogeny of gudgeons using 1097 base pairs of mitochondrial (control region) and nuclear (first intron of the S7 r-protein) gene fragments, and found that the genus to comprise of 15 European lineages divided into two main clades: a Northern European and a Ponto-Caspian clade. They also confirmed 11 species of gudgeon as valid.
Gobio volgensis is described as being morphologically indistinguishable from the common gudgeon, G. gobio. The authors consider it to be a cryptic species distinguishable from G. gobio by molecular analysis.
For more information, see the paper: Mendel, J, S Lusk, ED Vasil eva, VP Vasil ev, V Luskov, FG Ekmekci, F Erk akan, A Ruchin, J Kosco, L Vetesnk, K Halacka, R Sanda, AN Pashkov and SI Reshetnikov (2008) Molecular phylogeny of the genus Gobio Cuvier, 1816 (Teleostei: Cyprinidae) and its contribution to taxonomy. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 47, pp. 1061"1075.