Two new species of catfish have been found in northeastern Borneo.
The species are both members of the Bagridae family and have been named Leiocassis collinus and L. tenebricus by Heok Hee Ng and Kelvin Lim in a paper in the latest issue of the journal Ichthyological Exploration of Freshwaters.
Leiocassis collinus was discovered in the Segama and Kalabakan River drainages in the state of Sabah on the northwest tip of Borneo.
The catfish has a colour pattern made up of faint pale patches on a darker body colour, and can be told apart from other members of the genus by a combination of characters ranging from its pectoral spine length to the diameter of its eye.
The second new species, L. tenebricus, was discovered in the Kayan River drainage in Kalimantan Timur, or East Kalimantan - the Indonesian part of Borneo.
Leiocassis tenebricus has a uniform brown base colouration, rather than the mottled pattern seen in other species in the genus, as well as a shorter pectoral spine.
The Leiocassis genus contains more than a dozen valid species, one of which, L. aculeatus, was described by Heok Hee Ng along with Renny Hadiaty from Aceh in Sumatra last year.
For more information on the new tropical fish species see the paper: Ng, HH and KKP Lim (2006) - Two new species of Leiocassis (Teleostei: Bagridae), riverine catfishes from northeast Borneo. Ichthyological Exploration of Freshwaters 17: 165-172.