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Hamid Badar Osmany (1) Andrew Rao (2) Arnob Bora (1) Sadit Khan (1)

Description: Dorsal spines (total): 1; Dorsal soft rays (total): 7; Anal spines: 0; Anal soft rays: 10 - 11. Body elongate and compressed; head conical; occipital process narrow. Maxillary barbels, in adults, extend posteriorly beyond the caudal fin base, but in young specimen, do not extend beyond the anal fin. Dorsal spine weak, often feebly serrated. Habitat: Found in tidal rivers and lakes; also beels, canals, ditches, ponds, and inundated fields. Its pectoral spine can cause painful wounds. Found in the basin-wide tributary of the lower Mekong. Colouration: Greyish with a more or less well-defined midlateral longitudinal stripe. A dark spot emphasized by a white or pale area along its ventral margin is just anterior to the first dorsal spine. Dorsal, adipose and caudal fins shaded with melanophores. Reproduction: Oviparous, distinct pairing possibly like other members of the same family. Etymology: The genus name Mystus: "Mystax" meaning whiskered (hair on the upper lip) Mystus was first used by Belon in 1553 to describe all fish with whiskers. The specific name cavasius: latinisation of Kavasi, from Kavasi tenggara, local Hindi name for this species in India. Remarks: Reports of this species from the Chao Phraya and Mekong basins, Malaysia, and Indonesia are based on misidentifications of Mystus albolineatus or Mystus singaringan. Mystus cavasius was described from the Atrai River (Hamilton 1822). This species was previously thought to occur throughout the Indian subcontinent and Myanmar, but Chakrabarty and Ng (2005) showed that the name should be restricted to the populations from northern part of the subcontinent, those from the southern part are referable to M. seengtee and those from Myanmar are referable to M. falcarius.

Gangatic mystus

Pimelodus cavasius, Mystus mukherjii

Bagridae

Asia: Known from the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Mahanadi, Subarnarekhar and Godavari river drainages in northern India, Nepal and Bangladesh.

40.0cm (16ins)

22-27°C (71-81°F)

6.0-7.0.

Ferraris, C.J. Jr., 2007. Checklist of catfishes, recent and fossil (Osteichthyes: Siluriformes), and catalogue of siluriform primary types. Zootaxa 1418:1-628.
Froese, R. and D. Pauly. Editors. 2019. FishBase. World Wide Web electronic publication. www.fishbase.org, ( 12/2019 ).
Ng, H.H. 2010. Mystus cavasius. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2010: e.T166409A6202832.
Talwar, P.K. and A.G. Jhingran, 1991. Inland fishes of India and adjacent countries. Volume 2. A.A. Balkema, Rotterdam.
The ETYFish Project Fish Name Etymology Database © Christopher Scharpf.