According to reports, a team of researchers from the Department of Zoology of Dera Natung Government College of Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh discovered three new species of fish of genus Aborichthys of family Nemachelidae. They named the novel species as Aborichthys uniobarensis, Aborichthys barapensis and Aborichthys palinensis.
The finding has been published in international journals like the Asian Journal of Conservation Biology, Journal of Threatened Taxa, and FishTaxa. It is found that the three fish species are seen in the tributaries of Brahmaputra River, which are Senki, Barap, and Palin. These species are thus endemic to the eastern Himalayas.
Earlier, 11 species of the genus Aborichthys were spotted in the Eastern Himalayan region from the early 1900s. Among them, three of the new species were detected outside Arunachal Pradesh such as from Bhutan, Meghalaya, and West Bengal.
The features of Aborichthys are that it has an elongate and slender- body. These species possess narrow oblique bars horizontally on the body with a black ocellus at the upper extremity of the caudal-fin base and a round-shaped or truncated tail fin.
It is a freshwater stone loach that inhabits the moderate-to-fast flowing water of Mountain Rivers, streams, and drainages of the Brahmaputra river basin.
Major rivers like the Siang, Lohit, Dibang, Subansiri, Kameng, Noa-dihing and several small rivers and streams flow towards the Brahmaputra River and are expected to be the habitat of different fish species.
The report says that however 250 fish species have been identified in the region so far, it is quite less than its potential. As the Brahmaputra River has diverse aquatic habitats, the distribution of more fish species in the region should be increased.
Moreover, these species are vulnerable to climate change and which ultimately leads to their habitat alteration. It is why; there must be an account of the unidentified fish species of the Himalayan region, before studying the impact of climate change.
