Gitchak nakana: First Blind Aquifer-Dwelling Fish in Northeast India
An international team of taxonomists discovered a new genus and species of blind, aquifer-dwelling fish named Gitchak nakana from a dug-out well in Assam, marking the first such record in Northeast India and the Eastern Himalayan landscape.The name is derived from the Garo language, where ‘Gitchak’ means red (referring to the fish’s striking red life color), and ‘na-tok kana’ translates to ‘blind fish’ (due to the absence of eyes).It belongs to a new genus within the family Cobitidae (a family of true loaches).It is a highly specialized subterranean (groundwater-dwelling) fish, found in extremely low numbers in a single dug-out well. The exact location was withheld to protect the vulnerable population.This discovery provides the first clear evidence that the Eastern Himalayas harbor highly specialized subterranean phreatobitic (aquifer-dwelling) fauna.Prior to this discovery, such evolutionarily distinct subterranean fish were primarily known only from the lateritic lowlands of the Western Ghats in southern India.Subterranean fishes, such as the Blind Catfish (Horaglanis krishnai) of Kerala, are among the world’s most evolutionarily distinct fishes, specially adapted to life in underground aquatic habitats.
