A potentially rare new species of curimatid was discovered in the Rio Mapaoni during a 2005 expedition to the Parque Nacional das Montanhas do Tumucumaque in western Amap & aacute; State, Brazil. The new species is distinguished by possessing a striking dark stripe of chromatophores extending from the snout across the operculum and lateral line to the caudal-fin base. The species appears to be endemic to the upper Jari Basin in the eastern Guiana Shield, near the borders of Brazil, Suriname, and French Guiana. Variation in the midlateral stripe in Cyphocharax is figured and briefly discussed.
Type material and type localities are listed for 27 species-group taxa named by George Morgan Davis. All are freshwater gastropods and for all but two of these, there is type material in the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Type material of 25 taxa is illustrated herein. Davis always restricted the type series of taxa that he named to the type locality. Type material might have been cited in the original work by catalogue number or locality and, similarly, material was excluded from the type series of some taxa by citation of catalogue number or locality. For some taxa the published coordinates are corrected herein.
Moenkhausia lepidura ocoae Fowler 1943 is herein considered a valid species in Hyphessobrycon and a senior synonym of Hyphessobrycon otrynus Benine & Lopes 2008. Hyphessobrycon ocoae (Fowler 1943) was also misidentified as Hemigrammus marginatus Ellis 1911 in the older literature. We review the diagnostic features of Fowler's species which include a broad subdistal patch of dark pigmentation on each caudal-fin lobe joined vertically by dark pigment on the distal half of the middle caudal-fin rays and membranes (vs. subdistal dark patches on caudal-fin lobes completely separate in Hy. bayleyi and Hy. diancistrus or absent in other congeners). The distribution of Hy. ocoae extends across much of the llanos portion of the Rio Orinoco basin in Colombia and Venezuela, and also includes historical records for Lake Valencia, an endorheic system in northern Venezuela. Of the 1,871 names proposed by Henry W. Fowler (1878-1965) for new taxa of extant fishes (not as replacement names or due to technical mistakes), about 699 (37.4%) can be considered valid at some level in 2023 compared to about 38.3% in 2011.
A new species, Microsternarchus schonmanni, is described from a series of specimens collected in the lower portion of the Rio Paca & aacute;s Novas and Rio Mamor & eacute;-Guapor & eacute; drainages, Brazil. This is a region of high biodiversity with periodically flooded forests and savannas. The new species is diagnosed from nominal species M. bilineatus, M. brevis and M. longicaudatus by measurements including the length of caudal filament, size of mouth and eyes, and distance from snout to posterior naris. In addition, the new species differs in the higher number of anal-fin rays. Furthermore, the wider maxilla of M. schonmanni is distinguished from the more elongate maxilla of M. bilineatus, M. brevis and M. longicaudatus.
Tawny-crested Tanager Chrysocorypha delatrii (Lafresnaye) is a poorly known passerine bird that ranges from Honduras to Ecuador. Howell (1957) suggested, but did not demonstrate, that body size decreases with latitude. To test this hypothesis, and to review the status of a poorly known subspecies, C. d. longirostris (Huber, 1929), I collected and analyzed measurements from a range-wide sample of study skins, including type specimens (n = 203). I also performed phylogenetic analysis on a small dataset of publicly archived DNA sequences. These data confirm the existence of a morphometric cline in C. delatrii, strengthen the case for treating the complex as a monotypic species, and highlight opportunities for future research.
Additional material of Potadoma riperti Sam & eacute;-Ekobo & Kristensen, 1985 is reported for the first time since the species was named. The new localities are near the type locality at Mikel, southeast Cameroon. All localities are in the Boumba River drainage. The species should still be considered endangered because of its small geographic range, but its status might be upgraded from critically endangered.
Three species of freshwater sponges, Ephydatia muelleri (Lieberk & uuml;hn, 1856), Ephydatia fluviatilis (Linnaeus, 1759), and Heteromeyenia baileyi (Bowerbank, 1863), were collected from western Pennsylvania streams and quarry lakes in the Ohio River watershed from 2014 to 2019. This is the first literature report of these sponge species in western Pennsylvania. Identification relied on spicule morphology and was supported by barcode analysis of partial mitochondrial DNA sequences from the cytochrome oxidase subunit 1 (COI) gene. These barcode sequences could differentiate Ephydatia from Heteromeyenia but could not reliably resolve species-level identifications due to low sequence variation. All three species were found in streams with little or no silt and situated downstream from lentic bodies of water. In addition, E. fluviatilis was found in quarry lakes on substrates of various pitches but not found on top of horizontal surfaces.
