Garra dunsirei

Common name. Tawi Attair garra.

Diagnosis. Distinguished from other species of Garra in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Dhofar (Oman) by: ● neural spines very short and not penetrating between dorsal pterygiophores / ○ subterranean, body whitish or pink / ○ eye small / ○ scales on chest and belly reduced or absent. Size up to 81 mm SL.

Distribution. Oman: Sinkhole at Tawi Attair in Jabal Qara Mountains in Dhofar region.

Habitat. Subterranean species. Found in a large side passage about 200 m below surface, which may be a window into a much larger underground cave system.

Biology. No data. Captive individuals have been reported to live up to 16 years; no data are available from wild, but life expectancy in wild is likely to be much shorter.

Conservation status. CR; restricted to a single known locality where it has not been found in recent years. Fewer than 250 mature individuals are believed to exist, although this may be underestimated due to the difficulty of thoroughly exploring the sinkhole.

Remarks. Its closest relatives are G. smartae and G. sindhae. Despite being a young species, it shows very strong and distinct evolutionary trajectories and represents a different species under the Evolutionary Species Concept.

Further reading. Banister 1987 (description); Hamidan et al. 2014 (phylogeny); Freyhof et al. 2020 (distribution, identification); Sayyadzadeh et al. 2023 (phylogeny).