A revision of the pike cichlids of the Atlantic coastal rivers of southeastern Brazil has led to the description of three new species.
The study, which was undertaken by Sven Kullander of the Swedish Museum of Natural History and Carlos Santos de Lucena of the Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio Grande do Sul, examined the Crenicichla species found in southeastern Brazil's coastal rivers from Bahia state to Rio Grande do Sul state. The work has just been published in the journal Neotropical Ichthyology.
The authors recorded six species from the region, half of which were new to science. Crenicichla mucuryna, which was described by Ihering in 1914, is restricted to the upper Rio Mucuri in Minas Gerais; C. lacustris, described by Castelnau in 1855, is found from the Rio Paraiba do Sul north to the Rio Buranhem in Bahia, and C. punctata is found in the Laguna do Patos basin.
The three new fish have been named Crenicichla iguapina, C. tingui and C. maculata.
C. iguapina is known from the Rio Ribeira de Iguape; C. tingui was found from the Rio Itapocu to the Rio Nhundiaquara drainage, and C. maculata was was in Lagoa (Lake) dos Quadros, the Rio Maquine and Rio Grande do Sul to the Rio Itapocu.
The study also places C. biocellata and C. dorsocellata into synonmy with C. lacustris.
The genus now includes over 74 different species, making it one of the cichlid family's most species-rich.
For more details see the paper: Kullander SO and CA Santos de Lucena (2006) - A review of the species of Crenicichla (Teleostei: Cichlidae) from the Atlantic coastal rivers of southeastern Brazil from Bahia to Rio Grande do Sul States, with descriptions of three new species. Neotropical Ichthyology, 4 (2): 127-146.