Pterocryptis is a genus of sheatfish. These fish are medium-sized catfishes usually found in fast flowing mountain streams throughout India, southern China and Southeast Asia. P. buccata is a cavefish.

Species

There are currently 17 recognized species in this genus:

• Pterocryptis anomala (Herre, 1934)

• Pterocryptis barakensis Vishwanath & Nebeshwar Sharma, 2006

• Pterocryptis berdmorei (Blyth, 1860)

• Pterocryptis bokorensis (Pellegrin & Chevey, 1937)

• Pterocryptis buccata H. H. Ng & Kottelat, 1998 (Cave sheatfish)

• Pterocryptis cochinchinensis (Valenciennes, 1840)

• Pterocryptis crenula H. H. Ng & Freyhof, 2001

• Pterocryptis furnessi (Fowler, 1905)

• Pterocryptis gangelica Peters, 1861

• Pterocryptis indica (Datta, Barman & Jayaram, 1987)

• Pterocryptis inusitata H. H. Ng, 1999

• Pterocryptis neglecta (Endruweit, 2025)

• Pterocryptis subrisa Ng, Lalramliana & Lalronunga, 2018

• Pterocryptis taytayensis (Herre, 1924)

• Pterocryptis verecunda H. H. Ng & Freyhof, 2001

• Pterocryptis vorax Ng, Kahar & Tan, 2025

• Pterocryptis wynaadensis (Day, 1873)

• Synonyms

• Pterocryptis torrentis (Kobayakawa, 1989); valid as P. berdmorei

Genomics

A near telomere-to-telomere genome assembly of Pterocryptis cochinchinensis was published in 2026, representing a high-quality reference genome for the genus. The genome is approximately 931.7 Mb in size, assembled into 28 chromosomes, with a BUSCO completeness of 96.7%, and 28,079 protein-coding genes functionally annotated.

References