14. Garra dunsirei Banister, 1987 ―Tawi Atair Garra ―Endemic Taxonomy. Original description: Garra dunsirei Banister, 1987:59, figs. 1, 2a, 3-5 [from a Sinkhole, Tawi Atair [or Attair], 17°06’N, 54°34’E, in the Jabal Qara (Jabal Samhan) mountains, Dhofar, Oman; Holotype: BMNH 1984.3.6.571]. Synonyms: Garra smartae Krupp & Budd, 2009; Garra sindhae Lyon, Geiger & Freyhof, 2016. Status in the Arabian Peninsula. Recorded from Oman in original description by Banister (1987); confirmed by Lyon et al. (2016); Freyhof et al. (2020), Esmaeili et al. (2022) and Sayyadzadeh et al. (2023). General distribution. Middle East: Dhofar Province (Oman). Habitat: freshwater. Distribution in the Arabian Peninsula. Oman: Sinkhole at Tawi Attair in the Jabal Qara (Jabal Samhan) mountains, Wadi Andhur, Wadi Hadhabram, and Wadi Laggashalyon (Sayyadzadeh et al. 2023). Economic importance. No commercial importance. Conservation. Endangered (EN). Remarks. Garra species from the Dhofar region in Oman were reviewed by Sayyadzadeh et al. (2023) based on integrated morphological and molecular (COI) data of newly collected fishes from the type localities of G. sindhae and G. smartae, and a new population from Wadi Laggashalyon. They found no diagnostic character to distinguish the two species and the Laggashalyon population as distinct taxa. In addition, the phylogenetic tree placed the sequenced Omani Garra fishes into nine groups with K2P sequence divergence of 0.8% (G. smartae and G. smartae _Laggasaylon); 1.2% (G. smartae and G. sindhae), and 14.5% (G. shamal and G. dunsirei) in their COI barcode region. A molecular species delimitation approach using PTP, also detected one entity for Garra species from the Dhofar region (G. dunsirei, G. sindhae and both populations of G. smartae), which is consistent with our morphological data. Therefore, based on absence of diagnostic characters, low genetic distance, and molecular species delimitation approach, Sayyadzadeh et al. (2023) treated G. sindhae and G. smartae as junior synonyms of G. dunsirei.

Published as part of Esmaeili, Hamid Reza & Hamidan, Neshat, 2023, Inland fishes of the Arabian Peninsula: Review and a revised checklist, pp. 201-226 in Zootaxa 5330 (2) on page 209, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5330.2.2, http://zenodo.org/record/8249316