Pseudorasbora, Bleeker, 1859

Pseudorasbora View in CoL

A genus of six small species found in East Asia. Pseudorasbora parva is one of the world’s most successful invasive fish species. It was first introduced from China to Europe in the early 1960s as a by-product of Chinese carp aquacul- ture. Following the initial introduction, the establishment of P. parva populations in European water bodies happened quickly and reached Anatolia and the Caucasus. Conse- quently, in less than six decades, P. parva has become wide- spread in central and western Europe, Türkiye, and Central Asia.Genetic analysis of the European P. parva invasion indi- cates that two Chinese lineages from southern and northern China constitute the gene pool of all European and Anato- lian populations. These two lineages exhibit a large hybrid zone in Central China, suggesting that fish from that area may have been originally introduced to Europe. The initial introduction of P. parva into the Iranian inland waters (first recorded in 1991) was distinct from other Eurasian countries, as it originated from Japan.This is likely associated with com- mercial links between Japan and Iran in the 1980s when Iran was politically isolated from Europe.Since then,the Japanese lineage of P. parva has also spread to eastern Türkiye and has found contacts with the Chinese P. parva in the border area of Iran and Azerbaijan.

Further reading. Hardouin et al. 2018 (phylogeography); Baltazar-Soares et al. 2020 (Dispersal in Europe); Ganjali et al. 2020 (invasion of Iran).