Shillong, Aug 2: Meghalaya continues to fascinate the scientific community with its diverse yet unexplored flora and fauna. In yet another discovery in the State, a new species of loach fish has been found in the South Garo Hills district of Meghalaya.

A group of scientists, led by Dr Khlur Mukhim, Principal of Lady Keane College, has discovered a new species of loach inside three caves in western Meghalaya’s South Garo Hills bordering Bangladesh, officials said on Wednesday.

Loach is a freshwater bottom-dwelling fish and are found across the rivers in South East Asia and the new species Schistura sonarengaensis was reported from three caves in South in Garo Hills district – Sonarenga cave, Nakama cave and Chiabol cave, they said.

Funded by the Lucknow-based ICAR – National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources, this new species of loach was discovered by a team of scientists from Lady Keane College and Guwahati University.

Wiley-Blackwell, an international Journal of Fish Biology of the Fisheries Society of the British Isles, which published the research paper, said “A new species of nemacheilid loach, Schistura sonarengaensis sp. nov., is described from three cave-dwelling populations (Barak-Surma-Meghna drainage) in the South Garo Hills district of Meghalaya, India.”

The new species possesses prominent eyes but is easily distinguished from all the congeners of the genus Schistura from Barak-Surma-Meghna and adjacent rivers drainages of northeast Indian (except S. syngkai) in having 13-26 vertically elongated to circular mid- lateral black blotches (brownish in life) overlayered on a grayish-black mid-lateral stripe on a dull white or pale-beige (golden brown in life) body, it added.

Although the new species lacks typical morphological adaptations usually associated with a subterranean life, such as complete absence (or vestigial presence) of eyes and pigmentation it exhibits a reduction of pigmentation when compared to the epigean congeners, Dr Mukhim said.

He further pointed out that genetic molecular analysis confirms the distinction of this new species from other known species in the region.

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