@article {541, title = {Electric organ discharges of South African Marcusenius species (Teleostei: Mormyridae) and their effectiveness as indicators of local species diversity}, journal = {Zootaxa}, volume = {4200}, year = {2016}, month = {May-11-2018}, pages = {367}, abstract = {

Recent morphological and genetic studies have revealed two new species of snoutfish in South Africa, Marcusenius caudisquamatus and M. krameri, which had been confused with M. pongolensis, the South African bulldog fish. All known mormyriform fish are nocturnal and emit electric organ discharges (EODs) for communication that are characteristic for their species. This paper examines whether or not the EODs of these three closely-related South African species can be differentiated from each other. An EOD pulse of a bulldog fish consists of a head-positive phase P, followed by a head-negative phase N of short duration. We measured and compared six variables of the EOD pulse waveform for South African samples for the three species from different locations using MANOVA, ANOVA and Discriminant Analysis, with M. devosi from Kenya as an outgroup. The EOD waveforms, normalized to the same P-phase amplitude, varied significantly from each other in four variables, most strongly in the amplitude of the N phase and the duration of the P phase. In two species, M. devosi and M. krameri, there was no evidence of difference between sexes, in contrast to M. pongolensis and M. caudisquamatus whose male pulses were of longer duration. M. devosi and M. krameri were statistically significantly independent of each other and of any other group studied. By contrast, the M. pongolensis specimens from different locations showed a high degree of variability amongst each other, including significant separation, and overlap with M. caudisquamatus.

}, issn = {1175-5326}, doi = {10.11646/zootaxa.4200.310.11646/zootaxa.4200.3.2}, url = {http://biotaxa.org/Zootaxa/issue/view/zootaxa.4200.3}, author = {Bernd Kramer and Pholoshi A. Maake and Ofer Gon} } @article {881, title = {Descriptions of three new species of Marcusenius Gill, 1862 (Teleostei: Mormyridae) from South Africa and Mozambique}, journal = {Zootaxa}, volume = {3780}, year = {2014}, month = {03/2014}, pages = {455}, abstract = {

Morphological and genetic studies of mormyrid fishes belonging to the genus Marcusenius from South Africa and Mozambique revealed four species of which three are described as new. Marcusenius pongolensis is widespread throughout the Incomati, Pongola and Kosi river systems, and sparsely represented in the Limpopo River system in South Africa. Marcusenius krameri sp. nov. is endemic to the Limpopo River system, and is the sister taxon of M. caudisquamatus sp. nov. from the Nseleni and Mhlatuze river systems in the KwaZulu-Natal Province of South Africa. The Ruvuma specimens were well differentiated from all southern and eastern African species of Marcusenius, and are therefore recognised as M. lucombesi sp. nov. Phylogenetic analysis of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene showed that the three new species and M. altisambesi form a monophyletic lineage that is sister to a group containing M. pongolensis and M. macrolepidotus. Marcusenius krameri and M. lucombesi seems to prefer slow flowing reaches of rivers, whereas M. pongolensis and M. caudisquamatus seems to mainly inhabit rapid flowing sections of rivers with a rocky substrate. A key to the southern African species of Marcusenius is provided.

}, issn = {1175-5326}, doi = {10.11646/zootaxa.3780.3.2}, author = {Pholoshi A. Maake and Ofer Gon and Ernst Swartz} }