Naming the other cousin: A new goldie barb (Cyprinidae: Smiliogastrininae) from the northeast escarpment in South Africa, with proposed taxonomic rearrangement of the goldie barb group in southern Africa

A growing body of evidence indicates that the global diversity of freshwater fishes has not been fully documented. Studies of freshwater fishes that were previously thought to be morphologically variable have revealed the existence of deeply divergent lineages, with many distinct species. In southern Africa a number of Enteromius species exhibit either exceedingly wide or divided distribution patterns that should be rare for freshwater fishes with limited dispersal opportunities between river systems.

One such species is the sidespot barb, Enteromius neefi. As currently defined, E. neefi has a disjunct distribution that is divided between rivers in the northeast escarpment in South Africa and Eswatini, and tributaries of the Upper Zambezi in Zambia and southern Congo in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with a large geographic gap between these two populations. With the use of molecular and morphological methods, the level of divergence between the two populations was examined, and a new species was described from the Steelpoort River in the Limpopo River system of South Africa.

Findings from this study provide further evidence for a number of taxonomic problems within the goldie barbs of southern Africa, and some taxonomic rearrangements are proposed for this group.