Fishes of Gabon

Since 2014 we have been surveying the ichthyological biodiversity of key regions near proposed dam sites or wetlands of international importance within the central African country of Gabon in collaboration with the Nature Conservancy and Gabon’s Agricultural and Forestry Research Institute (IRAF).  The resulting series of more than 10,000 specimens and 2000 associated tissue samples now supports ongoing research to identify new species, resolve the taxonomic boundaries of poorly known species, map Gabon’s fish biodiversity, predict the diversity of unsampled rivers, and forecast how dam building or other environmental changes might affect Gabon’s fishes.


OS22149 Enteromius pinnimaculatus holotype, tissue voucher GAB17-486, 41.05 mm standard length (SL). From Mipounga et al. (2020).


Map predicting the distribution of Gabon's fish diversity in relationship to the location of proposed hydropower dams. From Cutler et al. (2020)