Book
A report of RSPB-supported scientific research at Koytendag State Nature Reserve, East Turkmenistan
Welch, G. and Stoev, P.
Record Number:
5848
Year:
2019
Pages:
88 pages
Publisher:
Pensoft Publishers, Sofia
Notes:
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
Abstract:
Major international expeditions to Koytendag were organised by the RSPB in 2014 and 2015, following a scoping mission in 2013. Opportunistic recording, principally of birds, was made during separate technical visits between May 2012 and March 2016.
The most significant findings from the research carried out are:
1 Hydrogeology
a) discovery of a new cavity with several dry sinkholes and running water near Hojapil village. The estimated diameter of the underground cavity is approximately 100 m, with a depth of approximately 25 m.
b) discovery of a new sinkhole with a dry lake in the bottom.
c) discovery of a new cave with an underground lake with an estimated area of 4,400 m2 making it the largest underground lake not only in Turkmenistan but also in the whole territory of the North Eurasia.
d) confirmation that there are three discrete hydrological systems within the site.
5. Fish
a) seven of the ten species recorded for the area were identified in 2015.
b) eight individuals of the endemic Starostin’s blind loach Troglocobitis starostini (VU) were observed.
c) two novel survey techniques for the blind loach were trialled – use of a remotely operated vehicle to observe fish in situ and the collection of DNA samples in order to develop a means of detecting the presence of blind loach in water samples for surveying locations inaccessible to divers or remotely operated vehicles. More work is required to refine the DNA sampling methodology.
Times Cited:
1
Relevent Species:
Related Records:
Parin, N.V. and Dolzhansky, V.Y (1982)
Noemacheilus starostini, the first blind cave fish for the fauna of the USSR
Parin, N.V. (1983)Noemacheilus (troglocobitis) starostini sp. n. (Osteichthyes,Cobitidae) Novaya slepay a ryba iz podzemnykh vod Kuritangtau (Turkmeniya) [Noemacheilus (Troglocobitis) starostini sp. n. (Osteichthyes, Cobitidae) a new blind fish from subterranean waters of
Smirnov, S. (1983)A blind cave loach from south-western Asia, Noemacheilus starostini Parin
Zalesskaya, N.T. and Golovatch, S.I. (1989)The condition of biospeleology in the USSR
Pereladov, M. (1989)Some aspects of disribution of fishes in the subaquatic caves near Kugitang-Tau Mountains
Zalesskaja, N.T. (1989)On the progres in Soviet biospeleology in the 1980s
Maltsev, V.A. and Self, C.A. (1992)Cupp-Coutunn cave system, Turkmenia, Central Asia
Maltsev, V.A. (1996)News in the Kugitangtou caves exploration
Maltsev, V. and Korshunov, V. (1998)Geochemistry of fluorite and related features of the Kugitangtou Ridge Caves, Turkmenistan
Salnikov, V.B. (2006)Ichthyofauna of the Kugitang reservoirs
Kolvoort, I. and Kolvoort, W. (2008)Blindganger in de onderwaterwerelo
Prokofiev, A.M. (2009)Problems of the classification and phylogeny of nemacheiline loaches of the group lacking the preethmoid I (Cypriniformes: Balitoridae: Nemacheilinae)
Prokofiev, A.M. (2010)Morphological classification of loaches (Nemacheilinae)
Kottelat, M. (2012)Conspectus cobitidum: An inventory of the loaches of the world (Teleostei: Cypriniformes: Cobitoidei)
Shilin N.I. and Pereladov M.V. (2013)The Koytendag (Kugitang) blind charr is a rare and vulnerable representative of the cave ichthyofauna
Collette, B.B. (2013)Obituaries. Nikolai Vasil’evich Parin (1932–2012)
Turbanov, I.S., Palatov, D.M. and Golovatch, S.I. (2016)The state of the art of biospeleology in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union: a review of the cave (endogean) invertebrate fauna. 1. Introduction—Crustacea
Turbanov, I.S., Palatov, D.M. and Golovatch, S.I. (2016)The state of the art of biospeleology in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union: a review of the cave (endogean) invertebrate fauna. 2. Arachnida - Acknowledgements
Turbanov, I.S., Palatov, D.M. and Golovatch, S.I. (2016)The state of the art of biospeleology in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union: a review of the cave (endogean) invertebrate fauna. 3. References
Sendra, A., Sket, B. and Stoev, P. (2017)A striking new genus and species of troglobitic Campodeidae (Diplura) from Central Asia
Sidorov, D., Hou, Z. and Sket, B. (2018)Three new remarkable amphipod species (Crustacea: Gammaridae) from springs and subterranean waters of Central Asia
Decu, V., Juberthie, C., Iepure, S., Gheorghiu, V. and Nazareanu, G. (2019)An overview on the subterranean fauna from central Asia
Welch, G. and Stoev, P. (2019)A report of RSPB-supported scientific research at Koytendag State Nature Reserve, East Turkmenistan
Zimmerman, B., Jones, R. and Ball, S. (2019)Fishes. In: A report of RSPB-supported scientific research at
Koytendag State Nature Reserve, East Turkmenistan. Pensoft Publishers, Sofia, 42-58 pp.
Sket, B., Stoev, P., Deltshev, C., Marusik, Y. and Deharveng, L. (2019)Cave fauna. In: A report of RSPB-supported scientific research at Koytendag State Nature Reserve, East Turkmenistan
Degtyarev, A. and Pereladov, M. (2019)Hydrogeology
Karimov, B. (2020)Troglocobitis starostini. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2020: e.T39461A156723710
Komarov, V. (2021)New species of cave fauna discovered in Koytendag
Freyhof, J., Geiger, M.F., Ball, S. and Zimmerman, B. (2022)DNA barcode data confirm the placement of subterranean Noemacheilus (Troglocobitis) starostini Parin 1983 in the genus Paracobitis (Teleostei, Nemacheilidae)