RESUMO
Two Portuguese institutions, the Museu Maynense da Academia das Cincias de Lisboa (ACL), and the Museu da Cincia da Universidade de Coimbra (MCUC), house a collection of 85 dried fish specimens prepared in what can be called a fish-herbaria following a process similar to that developed by the Dutch naturalist Johan Frederic Gronovius (16901762). These specimens date back to the late eighteenth century and represent Brazilian taxa. Previous authors assumed that they were part of the collections amassed by the Brazilian-Portuguese naturalist Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira (17561815) during his philosophical voyage to the Amazon. Here we present a review of these specimens, suggesting that they belonged to Friar Jos Mariano da Conceio Veloso (17421811) and describe the history of dispersal of these collections up the present day. A total of 58 species in 50 genera, 32 families and 19 orders are represented in the collection. Only 8.6% of these specimens represent freshwater species, while 91.4% are marine or brackish water species. The present known distribution of these taxa is focused on southwestern Brazil, which agrees with the area where Veloso collected natural history specimens. A good percentage of the species were undescribed at the time Veloso collected them, and had they been published by him, would have had priority over species described decades later by famous eighteenth and nineteenth century ichthyologists. We also present a brief discussion on the challenges and opportunities of studying historical natural history specimens, with special focus on those amassed during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century by Brazilian-Portuguese naturalists.
Assuntos
História Natural , Humanos , Masculino , Animais , BrasilRESUMO
Microcambeva bendego, a small psammophilous catfish species, is described from the rio Guapi-Macacu basin at Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro State, an Atlantic Forest remnant. This coastal drainage has been explored by several naturalists and fish researchers since the 19th century. It is a drainage with remarkably high endemism and species richness, and some recently-described and threatened species. The new species is distinguished from all congeners by two distinctive characters: long finger-like projections in the branchial isthmus and a large opercular patch of odontodes with 19 odontodes. Due to the paucity of specimens (n=3) osteological features of the new species were accessed by CT-Scan images of the holotype. Microcambeva bendego shares putative synapomorphies with two congeners, M. ribeirae and M. filamentosa, such as the fusion of supraorbital pore s6, the absence of ossification in the anterior autopalatine cartilage, the presence of an elongated and wide posterior process of the autopalatine, and a concavity on the dorsal process of the opercle. Those characters suggest that M. bendego is more closely related to those two species from the rio Ribeira de Iguape basin than to other congeners. The biogeography and conservation status of M. bendego are also discussed.