Two New Catfish with Ananda Serejo

What kind of catfish are in your local river? In Northeastern Brazil, catfish are so diverse and specialized that sometimes each river its own species. In fact, Ananda Serejo has been studying this group of catfish for 10 years, working hard to untangle their phylogeny. “The intraspecific variation, it's very, very, very hard to find” she says. “You need to have this integrative approach, use more than one line of evidence that you could be more sure about what you are proposing”

Ananda is mainly working on the taxonomy of this group, but she found a way to engage her community of Maranhão by naming her species after two cultural icons, Catirina from the Festa de São Joã, and the incredible local artist and performer Dona Teté. Ananda believes that giving people this direct connection to the fish will help them be better conserved, appreciated, and understood.

Ananda Serejo’s paper “Integrative taxonomy reveals two new species of whiptail catfishes Loricaria (Siluriformes: Loricariidae) from northeastern Brazil” is in the April 8th 2026 edition of the Journal of Fish Biology.

It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1111/jfb.70395

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Ananda Serejo - Transcript

New Species: Loricaria catirina, Loricaria teteae

Episode image credit: Anada Serejo

Read more about Ananda’s work with catfishes: https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4915.3.10

Follow Ananda’s adventures on instagram: @anandaserejo

Read about Ananda’s other new Loricaria species: http://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4915.3.10

Learn more about Dona Teté: https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dona_Tet%C3%A9

Be sure to follow New Species on Bluesky (@newspeciespodcast.bsky.social) and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast) and “like” the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast).

Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)

If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at NewSpeciesPodcast@gmail.com

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