On a Collection of Fishes from River Gumati, Tripura, North East India

About this book

Language: English

From the introduction:

"The present study is based on a collection of 409 specimens collected from the river Gumti and its tributaries following through four subdivisions viz., Tirthmukh, Amarpur, Udaypur and Sonamura in the month of August 1985 by a party of the Zoological Survey of India, Calcutta, under my leadership. The geographical location of Tripura lying in the sub-Himalayan region with its varying physiogeographical characteristics have contributed to the formation of a diverse fish fauna. But adequate attention has not yet been paid so far to make a comprehensive survey of the fish resources of this state. Though some scattered works have been done on the fish fauna of this sub-Himalayan range of Tripura in recent years. This region deserves more fish faunal survey for the exploration of many unexplored localities of this state.

What we know about the fishes of this region, we owe to the work of Nair, 1971; Anon, 1975; Datta, 1977 and Lipton, 1983-84. Lipton (1983-84) reported 93 species belonging to 9 orders (written 11 orders), 24 families (written 26 families) under 56 genera (written 55 genera) collected from various surveys during the period 1976–1981 from this state. Out of 93 species, 8 species were recorded for the first time from Tripura. In that paper Lipton seems to have overlooked placing Batasio batasio (Hamilton) among the members of the family Sisoridae instead of the family Bagridae. The classical monumental works of Day (1878 and 1889) even today remain the most valuable contributions on the fishes of the Indian subcontinent but unfortunately these works did not contain the fish fauna of this suh-Himalayan range of Tripura.

Therefore, an attempt was made to make a comprehensive survey of the fish faunal resources of this state. Being the main river of Tripura, Gumti and its tribularies were chosen to he surveyed first. A total number of 80 species comprising 57 genera, 25 families and 10 orders were identified and recorded in this present paper. Out of the 80 species, 12 species are being recorded here for the first time from Tripura in addition to one new species having been discovered and described.

The arrangement of classification followed here is that of Greenwood et al., (1966) and Jayaram (1981). In the specific synonymies, only original reference of the species with its type locality and Jayaram's reference (1981) given in the handbook of Freshwater Fishes of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma and Sri Lanka are written. Under each species common names of fishes and locality from where these fishes were collected are given."

Customer Reviews