On the morning of November 30th, Lishui City, Zhejiang Province, held a press conference at the city's administrative center to promote biodiversity conservation. At the conference, it was announced that a new freshwater fish species, the Oujiang small gudgeon, had been discovered in Lishui. The city also officially released the white paper, "Biodiversity Conservation in Lishui," the first such white paper on biodiversity conservation at the prefecture-level city level in China.
Name: Oujiang Small Swim Bladder Gudgeon
Scientific name: Microphysogobio oujiangensis
Discovery time: 2021
Location of discovery: Panxi, Jinyun County
In 2021, investigators from the Nanjing Institute of Environmental Sciences of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and the Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences collected a batch of small gudgeon specimens in Panxi, Jinyun County. They found differences between these specimens and other small gudgeon species distributed in the vicinity. After detailed morphological comparison and molecular phylogenetic analysis, they identified it as a new species. Since it is currently known to be distributed only in the Oujiang River basin, it was named after the Oujiang River.
The Oujiang small gudgeon is a small fish, generally not exceeding 10cm in length. It usually inhabits the middle and lower reaches of rivers, hiding in deeper waters during the day and swimming to shallower waters to forage in the evening. It generally feeds on algae and small benthic animals.
Since December 2019, the Lishui Municipal Bureau of Ecology and Environment has organized a comprehensive biodiversity baseline survey, discovering 134 native fish species. In 2021, through the implementation of the integrated protection and restoration project for mountains, rivers, forests, fields, lakes, grasslands, and deserts in the Oujiang River source area, Lishui's biodiversity conservation project further advanced biodiversity conservation efforts. The discovery of the new species, the Oujiang small gudgeon, fully demonstrates the high-quality aquatic ecological environment and rich aquatic biodiversity of the Oujiang River basin.
