Hypostomus yaku

Hypostomus yaku is a species of South American armoured catfish from the Loricariidae family. It is only known from the Rio Quente, a small thermal stream in the Rio Paranaíba drainage of the upper Paraná basin, Brazil.^[1] H. yaku is unusual when compared to other species of Hypostomus in that it tolerates warm water up to 34 °C and only attains a relatively small size, growing to 70.8 mm SL.^[1]

Taxonomy

H. yaku can be distinguished from the other members of Hypostomus, some 140 plus species,^[2] by the presence, in mature adults, of hypertrophied odontodes arranged randomly along its flanks and caudal peduncle.^[1] This characteristic is also found in species of other Hypostominae genera, Aphanotorulus, Peckoltia and Squaliforma, but can be distinguished by several keys (see Martins et al. 2014).^[1] H. yaku is most similar to two other species found in the same region, H. nigromaculatus and H. paulinus, but can differentiated by a lack of dark spots (versus presence in H. nigromaculatus)^[3] and by smaller adult size (70.8mm SL versus 135mm SL in H. paulinus).^[1]

References