| Summary: | In this work, a new species of the genus Oreonectes is described, named Oreonectes damingshanensis Yu, Luo, Lan, Xiao & Zhou, sp. nov., collected from the Damingshan Mountains of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China. Phylogenetic trees constructed based on the mitochondrial Cyt b showed that the new species represents an independent evolutionary lineage, with uncorrected genetic distances (p-distance) from congeners ranging from 6.1% to 8.9%. Morphologically, the new species can be distinguished from five other species of the genus by a combination of characters. The discovery of this new species raises the number of known species of Oreonectes from five to six. Our study suggests that O. platycephalus may be a complex containing multiple species and that previously recorded areas need to be further delimited and reevaluated.
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