Ventral View Morphometric Data for Andean Catfishes in Esmeraldas River Basin

Morphometric data for 386 specimens of the catfish genus Astroblepus from the Esmeraldas River basin in Ecuador. The dataset was created by Kevin P. Chugá-Puetate and last updated in April 2026, supporting an integrative taxonomy study combining geometric morphometrics and DNA barcoding. It was used to assess species diversity, revealing seven evolutionary lineages and two potentially new species.

Use Cases

• Species classification and delineation based on geometric morphometric data.
• Integrative taxonomy research combining morphological and genetic data as described.
• Studying morphological plasticity and cryptic diversity within a genus.
• Analyzing the relationship between altitudinal distribution and morphological divergence.

Strengths

• Integrates data from 386 specimens for morphometric analysis.
• Combines new and publicly available genetic sequences from 33 specimens.
• Dataset is openly available under a CC-BY-4.0 license.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The 176.6 KB file size indicates a very limited data scope.

Provenance

Source

Kevin P. Chugá-Puetate via figshare

Collection Method

Specimens were collected and analyzed as part of an integrative taxonomy study.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-22 17:44:59

Geography

Esmeraldas River basin, Ecuador