Seeking for gaps in taxonomic descriptions of endemic fishes: a pathway to challenge the Linnean shortfall in a Neotropical basin

Abstract

The Tocantins-Araguaia River basin hosts an elevated number of fish species, and new species have been continuously described. In this basin, we investigated patterns of endemic fish species descriptions examining their association with species distribution range, altitudinal gradient, fluvial hierarchy of watercourses, and sampling effort. For each species, we collected its year of taxonomic description, geographical coordinates of its holotype, body size (a proxy for species range), fluvial hierarchy of watercourses, and both altitude and sampling effort related to the locality of the holotype. The number of taxonomic descriptions was positively correlated to sampling effort, and better-sampled regions accumulated more descriptions over time. Moreover, altitude was positively correlated to the year of species description, whereas body size was negatively correlated to it. While species with recent descriptions were more associated to first to third order streams, species with recent and older descriptions were associated to high-order rivers. Therefore, fish species with broader distributions tend to have older descriptions in regions of lower altitude, whereas species with restricted distributions recent descriptions at higher altitudes. Increasing efforts in the upper regions of the Tocantins-Araguaia basin seems to be a good and fruitful strategy for reducing the Linnean shortfall.