Octo­ber 28 2021 the arti­cle describ­ing two new species from Indone­sia was pub­lished by our team sci­en­tist and field work man­ager Went­ian Shi, together with his team Shu­jie Guo, Hary­ono Hary­ono, Yijang Hong and Wan­chang Zhang. The arti­cle was pub­lished in the jour­nal Zootaxa and can be found here

Diag­noses of two new species of Parosphromenus (Teleostei: Osphrone­mi­dae) from Bangka Island and Kali­man­tan, Indonesia

Parosphromenus jueli­nae

1. jueli­nae occurs on the island of Bangka, which also is where P. deiss­neri and P. bin­tan occurs, though not in same loca­tions.

Its unpaired fin col­oration is sim­i­lar to that of P. deiss­neri, but it dif­fers from the lat­ter in hav­ing a rounded cau­dal fin with a non-filamentous branched median ray and a smaller anal fin. Although the new species has the same cau­dal fin struc­ture as P. bin­tan, it can be dis­tin­guished from the lat­ter by its dis­tinct unpaired fin col­oration and the intense red color on the body flanks

This species is restricted to a few adjoin­ing for­est streams and swamps belong­ing to the same river sys­tem in Bangka, which are not con­nected with the habi­tats of P. bin­tan and P deiss­neri. The habi­tats are well–pre­served and rel­a­tively undis­turbed by human activ­i­ties. How­ever, the edge of the dis­tri­b­u­tion area of this species is now under grow­ing pres­sure from agri­cul­tural activ­i­ties. The swamp of the above-mentioned col­lec­tion loca­tion in 2017 has been drained and con­verted into a paddy field in 2019; thus, likely extir­pat­ing the population.

Parosphromenus kishii sp. nov. can be eas­ily dis­tin­guished from all other Parosphromenus by its unique red­dish cau­dal fin with an irreg­u­lar faint turquoise pat­tern and pointed rhom­bic shape.

Parosphromenus kishii sp. nov.is con­fined to a sin­gle river, which now func­tions as a nat­ural irri­ga­tion canal for a large oil-palm plan­ta­tion. The habi­tat is extremely impacted. Any fur­ther works at the plan­ta­tion may lead to dredg­ing and expan­sion of this river, which may erad­i­cate the only known pop­u­la­tion of this species. Thus, fol­low­ing the IUCN Red List Cat­e­gories and Cri­te­ria (ver. 3.1), we pro­pose that this species be listed as Crit­i­cally Endan­gered B2ab (iii, v), based on its very restricted dis­tri­b­u­tion within a sin­gle river run­ning through an oil-palm plan­ta­tion (<50 km2) with only a sin­gle known loca­tion and the extremely high like­li­hood of becom­ing extinct due to the poten­tial works of sur­round­ing oil-palm plan­ta­tions. Imme­di­ate in-situ or ex-situ con­ser­va­tion is highly rec­om­mended for this species.