A team of the Oceanography Centre (CO) the Center for Environmental Biology (CBA) and the Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Évora and the Museum of Natural History and Natural Sciences (MNHNC), identified three new species of lampreys.
The species of lamprey Silver Coast, the Nabão and Sado were identified respectively in the basins of these rivers and occur only within the Portuguese territory. The presence of these fish in very restricted geographical areas requires assigning protected status that ensures their preservation, ie, fragmented populations are very small, and should, in the opinion of the researchers, be classified as "critically endangered", according to the criteria used to compile the latest revision of the Red Book of Vertebrates of Portugal.
The three new species were baptized according to their place of origin: the Silver Coast lamprey (Lampetra alavariensis) is endemic to the watershed and Esmoriz and Vouga; Sado lamprey (Lampetra Lusitanian) as the name indicates is the river system that assigns a common name, and finally the Nabão lamprey (Lampetra auremensis) is endemic in this sub-basin tributary on the right bank of the Tagus River. The remaining three types of lamprey have a wide distribution in Europe, but in the Iberian Peninsula, taking the sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus), which occurs in several river basins in this region, the area of distribution of lamprey-of-brook (Lampetra planeri) concentrated mainly in inside the country, with only two very circumscribed settlements in northern Spain, while the-river lamprey (Lampetra fluviatilis) has been declared extinct in Spain and Portugal, is limited to the lower portion of rivers Tagus and Sorraia. The study was conducted as part of the student's dissertation of Catarina Mateus, directed by Pedro Raposo de Almeida (U.S. / CO) and Judite Alves (MNHNC / CBA). This study, also counted on the collaboration of Bernard Quintella (CO / DBA-FCUL).
