Checklist of the freshwater fishes of Colombia: a Darwin Core alternative to the updating problem

Abstract

The present work is part of a process to create a Catalogue of the Freshwater Fishes of Colombia and consisted in the depuration and updating of the taxonomic and geographic components of the checklist of the freshwater fishes of Colombia. An exhaustive revision of the 1435 species recorded in 2008 was necessary to: 1. Add new species described since 2009 and species originally described from Colombia but inadvertently omitted in 2008; 2. Add new records of already described species; 3. Delete species whose presence in Colombia was not supported by voucher specimens in ichthyological collections; and 4. Revise the geographic distribution of the species listed in 2008. This process resulted in the following numbers: 1. Total number of freshwater fish species in Colombia: 1494; 2. Number of species recorded by hydrographic region - Amazon: 706, Orinoco: 663, Caribbean: 223, Magdalena-Cauca: 220, Pacific: 130; and 3. Number of endemic species: 374 (76% from the trans-Andean region). Updating the current checklist is a fundamental requirement to ensure its incorporation in the decision-making process with regard to the conservation of Colombian aquatic species and ecosystems, which are facing transformation processes as a result of activities such as mining, construction of hydroelectric plants, expansion of the agricultural frontier and subsequent deforestation, industrial and domestic pollution, development of waterways, introduction of exotic species, and climate change.

Fishes of the Cusiana River (Meta River basin, Colombia), with an identification key to its species

“…Valid species names were confirmed through queries on the Catalog of Fishes of the California Academy of Sciences (Eschmeyer et al 2017). Species were categorized as endemic (DoNascimiento et al 2017), threatened (Mojica et al 2012), migratory (Usma-Oviedo et al 2013), and species subject of conservation (González et al 2015). …”

“…The number of localities were obtained per Orinoco basin from the data set of the “Catalogue of the Freshwater Fishes of Colombia” (DoNascimiento et al 2017). …”

Modificación de ambientes lóticos para la extracción de carbón a cielo abierto: efectos sobre la biota y recomendaciones

“…Después de Brasil, Colombia es el país con mayor número de especies de peces dulceacuícolas con cerca de 1500 (DoNascimiento et al, 2017), de las cuales, 290 se registran en la zona hidrográfica del Caribe colombiano, zona que incluye lfig a cuenca del río Ranchería (Jiménez-Segura et al, 2016). En esta cuenca se han reportado cerca de 50 especies de peces dulceacuícolas (Mojica et al, 2006;Jiménez-Segura et al, 2016), lo que constituye cerca del 3 % del total de especies registradas para Colombia.…”

“…El conocimiento de la ictiofauna, y de la biota acuática en general, es crucial para la toma de decisiones relacionadas con actividades que impacten negativamente a los ecosistemas acuáticos (Anderson et al, 2006;DoNascimiento et al, 2017;Moreno Rodríguez et al, 2017). De hecho, el primer paso para una exitosa restauración ecológica de ambientes lóticos es la caracterización previa de la relación biotaambiente, incluyendo su variación temporal (Gorman y Karr, 1978;Bond y Lake, 2003).…”

A new troglomorphic species of Trichomycterus (Siluriformes: Trichomycteridae) from north‐eastern Colombia, with proposal of a new Trichomycterus subclade and remarks on some nominal species from Colombia

“…Colombia, with 56 species, is the country with the second highest diversity of the genus and interestingly, most of these species are distributed in trans‐Andean piedmont and mountainous river systems (DoNascimiento et al ., , ). At the same time, the country is distinguished by a large number of cave inhabiting species ( i.e .…”