A Rare Freshwater Goby Odontobutis Hikimius Collected from the Nishiki
Biogeography 14. 19-24. Sep. 20, 2012 A rare freshwater goby Odontobutis hikimius collected from the Nishiki River flowing down the southern slope of the drainage divide opposite to the Takatsu River, the type locality Harumi Sakae*, Toshihiro Hatama2 and Akihisa Iwata3 I Department of Aquabiology, National Fisheries University, 2-7-1 Nagata-Honmachi, Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi, 759-6595 Japan 2 Inland Sea Research Division, Yamaguchi Prefectural Fisheries Research Center, 437-77 Aio-Futashima, Yamaguchi, Yamaguchi, 754-0893 Japan 3 Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University, Yoshida-Honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606-8501 Japan Abstract. A rare freshwater goby Odontobutis hikimius Iwata & Sakai, 2002 was collected from the Nishiki River flowing into the Seta Inland Sea. The species was described based on specimens from three rivers flow- ing into the Sea of Japan, the Takatsu, Tama, and Masuda Rivers, as an endemically distributed new species. The Nishiki River flows the southern slope of the drainage divide opposite to the Takatsu River. It is thought that the Fukatani River that was a tributary of the Takatsu River has become a tributary of the Nishiki River due to a stream capture event. Following this event Odontobutis hikimius possibly immigrated to the Nishiki River system from the Takatsu River system. Key words: freshwater goby, Odontobutis hikimius, new locality, stream capture, immigration, morphology Introduction Specimens collected from the Nishiki River are identified with O. hikimius morphologically (Fig. 1). An endemic rare freshwater goby Odontobutis The Nishiki River flows on the opposite slope of the hikimius Iwata & Sakai, 2002 was described as a drainage divide to the Takatsu River and goes into the new species based on specimens collected from three Seto Inland Sea (Fig.
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