Cobitis satunini Gladkov, 1935 (Fig. 22) Cobitis taenia satunini Gladkov, 1935: 73 (type locality: Georgia: Kintrich River [entering Black Sea at 41.803, 41.769]). Material examined. FSJF 3559, 5, 35–78 mm SL; Georgia: Rioni River delta, southern branch, 42.180 41.646.— FSJF 3583, 1, 81 mm SL; Georgia: Urduni River at Ul'yanka, 41.948 41.937.— FSJF 3597, 1, 85 mm SL; Georgia: Chakhota River at Natanebi, 42.933 41.836.— FSJF 2372, 3, 68–93 mm SL; Turkey: Artvin prov.: stream Hopa at Hopa, 41.390 41.429. Material used in molecular genetic analysis. ZFMK ICH-TIS-NB186 and NB199, Georgia: Rioni R. drainage: Tskhenitskale River upstream from Samtredia, 42.169 42.431. (Accession numbers: KP 050504, KP 050505, KP 050519; BOLD EUFWF3072-18, MH 795377, EUFWF4743-18).— ZFMK ICH-TIS-K7-1, Georgia: Galitsga River near Ochamchir, 42.688 41.511. (BOLD accession number: EUFWF3048-18) — ZFMK ICH-TIS-NB1081, Georgia: Kelasuri River near Kelasur, 43.006 41.126. (BOLD accession numbers: BOLD EUFWF3052-18, BOLD EUFWF3053-18) Diagnosis. Cobitis satunini is distinguished from C. saniae by having the base of the lamina circularis narrowly attached to the pectoral-fin ray (vs. widely connected) and by having roundish or irregularly squarish blotches in Z4 anterior to the dorsal-fin origin (vs. blotches in Z4 horizontally elongate, often very densely set and fused into short or longer stripes). Distribution. Cobitis satunini is known from the Georgian Black Sea basin. It is expected to occur also in the tributaries of the adjacent rivers flowing to the Black Sea in Turkey east of Trabzon. Remarks. Cobitis satunini is closely related to C. taenia, especially to the populations from the southern Marmara Sea basin (see below). Based on DNA barcoding it is well separated from all other included Cobitis and by a minimum K2P distance of 1.6% to C. taenia from Turkey. Neither the PTP nor the mPTP delimitation approach resolved it as a unique entity but group it together with C. taenia. Cobitis taenia is distinguished from other Cobitis species in the northern Black Sea basin (C. elongatoides, C. taurica, and C. tanaitica) by having 48 chromosomes (vs. 50) (Janko et al. 2005). To our knowledge, this character has not been studied in C. satunini and the populations in the southern Marmara Sea basin. These chromosome data are needed to decide if C. satunini could be a synonym of C. taenia. Records of Cobitis along the southern Black Sea coast are very sparse and we are not aware of findings of Cobitis (except C. simplicispina) between Trabzon in the east (Erk'akan et al. 1999) and Bartın in the west (C. taenia, Perdices et. al. 2018). We examined Cobitis from Hopa and preliminary identify these as C. satunini awaiting confirmation from molecular data. We suspect, that Cobitis from Trabzon, identified as C. splendens by Erk'akan et al. (1999), might also belong to C. satunini. This record might have been based on males with a much reduced Z3. We strongly encourage fieldwork in this area to study the distribution ranges of Cobitis in the southern Black Sea basin.

Published as part of Freyhof, Jörg, Bayçelebi, Esra & Geiger, Matthias, 2018, Review of the genus Cobitis in the Middle East, with the description of eight new species (Teleostei: Cobitidae), pp. 1-75 in Zootaxa 4535 (1) on pages 29-30, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4535.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/2615773