A collection of fishes from tributaries of the lower Kouilou, Noumbi and smaller coastal basin systems, Republic of the Congo, Lower Guinea, west-central Africa

Abstract

A list of fishes is reported from right bank tributaries of the lower Kouilou River, left bank tributaries of the Noumbi River, and a series of independent coastal catchments near Madingo-Kayes in the Kouilou Province of the Republic of Congo. Thirty-two sites were sampled in a variety of aquatic habitats in the wet and dry seasons of 2012. Fifty-five fish species distributed in 29 families were collected, three of which represent putatively undescribed species. The most diverse families in the study region were the Cichlidae and the Mormyridae. This paper provides a comparison and update to earlier species lists reported for the general area and offers a baseline that may be used as a point of departure for future ichthyological assessments.