''Phoxinus strymonicus'', the Aegean minnow, is a species of freshwater

ray-finned fish Actinopterygii (; ), members of which are known as ray-finned fish or actinopterygians, is a class of bony fish that comprise over 50% of living vertebrate species. They are so called because of their lightly built fins made of webbings of sk ...

belonging to the

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

Leuciscidae Leuciscidae is a family of freshwater ray-finned fishes, formerly classified as a subfamily of the Cyprinidae, which contains the true minnows. Members of the Old World (OW) clade of minnows within this subfamily are known as European minnow ...

, which includes the daces, minnows and related fishes. This fish is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

to the northeastern Greece.

Taxonomy

''Phoxinus strymonicus'' was first formally described in 2007 by the Swiss

ichthyologist Ichthyology is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish, including bony fish (Osteichthyes), cartilaginous fish (Chondrichthyes), and jawless fish (Agnatha). According to FishBase, 35,800 species of fish had been described as of March 2 ...

Maurice Kottelat Maurice Kottelat (born 16 July 1957 in Delémont, SwitzerlandC ...

with its type locality given as " Strymon drainage,

Angitis The Angitis (), also known as Angista (; ''Dramatitsa''), is a river in Northern Greece. It is long. It is an important tributary of the Strymonas. Its source is in the Falakro mountains, in the regional unit of Drama, near the town of Pros ...

system, canals near Kalambaki, about 14 kilometers south of Drama, Macedonia, Greece". Kottelat was studying the variation in populations of what were thought to be "common minnows ''

Phoxinus phoxinus ''Phoxinus phoxinus'' (known colloquially as the Eurasian minnow, minnow, Channel minnow, or common minnow) is a species of freshwater ray-finned fish belonging to the family Leuciscidae, which includes the daces, minnows and related fishes. It i ...

'' ''

sensu lato ''Sensu'' is a Latin word meaning "in the sense of". It is used in a number of fields including biology, geology, linguistics, semiotics, and law. Commonly it refers to how strictly or loosely an expression is used in describing any particular co ...

'' and discovered that what had been thought to be a single widespread

Palearctic The Palearctic or Palaearctic is a biogeographic realm of the Earth, the largest of eight. Confined almost entirely to the Eastern Hemisphere, it stretches across Europe and Asia, north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. Th ...

species was, in fact, a

species complex In biology, a species complex is a group of closely related organisms that are so similar in appearance and other features that the boundaries between them are often unclear. The taxa in the complex may be able to hybridize readily with each oth ...

. This species is classified within the

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

Phoxinus ''Phoxinus'' is a genus of freshwater fish in the family Leuciscidae of order Cypriniformes, and the only members of the subfamily Phoxininae, or Eurasian minnows. The other species in this genus are also commonly known as minnows. The name "minn ...

'', the Eurasian minnows, within the

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unisp ...

subfamily In biological classification, a subfamily (Latin: ', plural ') is an auxiliary (intermediate) taxonomic rank, next below family but more inclusive than genus. Standard nomenclature rules end botanical subfamily names with "-oideae", and zo ...

Phoxininae of the family Leuciscidae.

Etymology

''Phoxinus strymonicus'' belongs to the genus ''Phoxinus'', this name is derived from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

''phoxinos'', meaning "small fishes". In 1553

Pierre Belon Pierre Belon (1517–1564) was a French traveller, natural history, naturalist, writer and diplomat. Like many others of the Renaissance period, he studied and wrote on a range of topics including ichthyology, ornithology, botany, comparative anat ...

used ot to refer to the fishes known as minnows in English and

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné,#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. was a Swedish biologist and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming o ...

used it as the specific name of a fish in 1758, which

Constantine Samuel Rafinesque Constantine Samuel Rafinesque-Schmaltz (; 22 October 178318 September 1840) was a French early 19th-century polymath born near Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire and self-educated in France. He traveled as a young man in the United States, ult ...

applied tautologically to the genus of minnows in 1820, its only species being ''Phoxinus phoxinus''. The

specific name Specific name may refer to: * in Database management systems, a system-assigned name that is unique within a particular database In taxonomy, either of these two meanings, each with its own set of rules: * Specific name (botany), the two-part (bino ...

, ''strymonicus'', refers to the Struma or Strymon River in Greece, the type locality.

Description

''Phoxinus strymonicus'' is identified from other European members of the genus ''Phoxinus'' by the having only small patches of scales on the breast, or their absence. The origin of the

anal fin Fins are moving appendages protruding from the body of fish that interact with water to generate thrust and help the fish swim. Apart from the tail or caudal fin, fish fins have no direct connection with the back bone and are supported o ...

is in front of the base of the last

dorsal fin A dorsal fin is a fin on the back of most marine and freshwater vertebrates. Dorsal fins have evolved independently several times through convergent evolution adapting to marine environments, so the fins are not all homologous. They are found ...

ray. This is a small fish with a maximum

standard length Fish measurement is the measuring of individual fish and various parts of fish anatomy, their anatomies, for data used in many areas of ichthyology, including Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy and fishery biology. Overall length Standard length (SL) is ...

of ,

Distribution and habitat

''Phoxinus strymonicus'' is endemic to the lower Strymon River system, where it occurs in the Agitis River and the adjacent Marmaras River in northeastern Greece. It can be found among dense vegetation in shallow water in small creeks fed with spring water and in canals in cultivated areas. It is most abundant in small streams that have clear and cold water.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q3756566 strymonicus Taxa named by Maurice Kottelat Fish described in 2007