Records of the Zoological Survey of India: Fishes of River Pennar and its Branches

From the introduction: River Pennar is one of the major rivers of South India and the third major river in Andhra Pradesh, after Godavari and Krishna. There is no published work on the fish fauna of this river system except the following works of general nature in which it is mentioned in distribution, generally as Peninsular India or Southern India or Madras Presidency: Day 1875-1878, 1889, Jayaram 1981, 1982, 1999, Jerdon 1849 Hamilton 1822 Menon 1999, Misra 1959-1969, 1976a, 1976b and Venkateswarlu 1984 and 1986. Keeping this in view the study of fish fauna of this river system was undertaken and four extensive tours were carried out by Shri. T. Venkateswarlu and party from 1983 to 1986. Altogether 85 species belonging to 16 families and 7 orders have been reported here. All the specimens were registered and deposited in Southern Regional Centre, Zoological Survey of India, Chennai. The most valuable record is the report of Neotropius Khavalchor Kulkarni. It is a monotypic species and is the first record after its original description by Kulkarni in 1952 Venkateswarlu and Indra, 1993. The study of the ichthyofauna of Pennar river is of significane since not much is known about the fishes draining the Southern Eastern Ghats.