Cristhian Conde-Saldaña

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History · Vertebrate Zoology

Phylogenetic analyses of mitochondrial and nuclear data of 31 specimens of Cyphocharax from trans‐Andean rivers support the presence of one lineage of Cyphocharax aspilos in Lago Maracaibo and three cryptic lineages of Cyphocharax magdalenae: (1) Cauca‐Magdalena and Ranchería, (2) León and Atrato, and (3) Chucunaque‐Tuira, Santa María, and Chiriquí...

We integrated large sample sizes, morphometric and molecular data, and phylogenetic and species delimitation analyses to test the 17-year-old hypothesis that only two species of whisker-cheeked suckermouth catfishes (genus Lasiancistrus) occur in river drainages west of the Andes Mountains. Our results reject this hypothesis, demonstrating that, in...

Tarumania walkerae is a rare fossorial freshwater fish species from the lower Rio Negro, Central Amazonia, composing the monotypic and recently described family Tarumaniidae. The family has been proposed as the sister group of Erythrinidae by both morphological and molecular studies despite distinct arrangements of the superfamily Erythrinoidea wit...

A new species of the genus Pristella Eigenmann, 1908 (Pristella crinogi sp. nov.) is described from the middle rio Tocantins and middle rio São Francisco basins, Brazil. The new species can be diagnosed from its two congeners, Pristella ariporo Conde-Saldaña, Albornoz-Garzón, García-Melo, Villa-Navarro, Mirande, and Lima, 2019 and Pristella maxilla...

Catfishes of the family Astroblepidae form a group composed by 82 valid species of the genus Astroblepus inhabiting high-gradient streams and rivers throughout tropical portions of the Andean Cordillera. Little has been advanced in the systematics and biodiversity of astroblepids other than an unpublished thesis, a single regional multilocus study...

An annotated list of the freshwater fishes of the Río Alvarado drainage, Upper Río Magdalena Basin is presented. Fishes were captured from nine localities, quarterly sampled between September 2012 and July 2013. A total of 36 species belonging to 14 families, distributed in five orders were collected. The most abundant species was Trichomycterus ba...

A new species of Pristella is described from the Río Meta drainage, Río Orinoco basin, Colombia. Pristella ariporo, new species, is described as the second known species of the genus and differs from P. maxillaris by lacking maxillary teeth, possessing all teeth of premaxilla and dentary conical, by the absence of a dark blotch on the pelvic fin an...

A new species of Pimelodella is described from northern coastal drainages of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (SNSM), Colombia. The new species is diagnosed from all trans-Andean congeners by the following unique combination of characters: head length 22.2–23.7% SL, bony interorbital width 17.6–21.6% HL, maxillary barbels length 53.0–68.3% SL, inne...

The monotypic Astroblepidae fish family includes 81 species distributed along Central and Northern Andes in South America and Panamá in Central America; most aspects regarding its biology, taxonomy, and chromosomal features remain largely unknown. This study reports the karyotype of two sympatric Astroblepus species from the Colombian Andes, aiming...

The Neotropical family Scoloplacidae is a monogeneric group of miniature freshwater catfishes that includes 6 species. Scoloplax dicra has the widest distribution across the Amazon basin, except in the western upper portions. We collected 3 specimens from localities close to Leticia in Colombia, corresponding to S. baileyi and S. dicra , constituti...

A new species of Creagrutus is described from several localities in the upper Río Magdalena drainage, Colombia. Creagrutus dulima n. sp. differs from all trans-Andean congeners by the combination of a relatively small orbital diameter, the shape and position of hooks on the pelvic-fin rays, in having the third infraorbital not in contact with the p...

Ecomorphological patterns of the fish community were evaluated in the trans-Andean Alvarado River drainage, Colombia. A total of 29 species using 25 ecomorphological indices were analyzed to test how well the ecomorphological patterns are related to the fish assemblage. Although a significant correlation was found (Mantel test) between morphologica...

This work constitutes the first cytogenetic characterization of a trans-Andean species of Heptapteridae. The catfish Pimelodella cf. chagresi from the Upper Rio Magdalena was studied, applying standard cytogenetic techniques (Giemsa, C-banding, and argyrophilic nucleolar organizer region [Ag-NOR]) and fluorescence in situ hybridization techniques u...

In Colombia a dam, Betania Reservoir, has been constructed on the main cannel of the Magdalena River, and another, the El Quimbo Hydroelectric Project which is located upstream of the first, is under construction. The dams not only generate fragmentation processes in the aquatic ecosystems, but also create artificial hybrid systems that impact the...

Se han descrito siete especies transandinas del género Pimelodella, de las cuales sólo Pimelodella chagresi (Steindachner, 1876) se distribuye en el Alto Magdalena. Este análisis preliminar intenta determinar si existen variaciones morfométricas entre las poblaciones de P. chagresi que habitan las principales cuencas hidrográficas del departamento...