Rita (from the Bengali name of Rita rita), commonly known as velvet catfishes, is a genus of catfish found in South Asia. It is the only member of the family Ritidae. These species have a single pair of mandibular barbels, an elongated Weberian apparatus firmly sutured to the basioccipital and the sensory canal on the posttemporal enclosed with bone.Ng, H.H. (2004): Rita macracanthus, a new riverine catfish (Teleostei: Bagridae) from South Asia. Zootaxa, 568: 1–12.
Species There are currently 7 recognized species in this genus: Rita bakalu K. K. Lal, Dwivedi & R. K. Singh, 2016 Lal, K.K., Dwivedi, A.K., Singh, R.K., Mohindra, V., Chandra, S., Gupta, B.K., Dhawan, S. & Jena, J. (2016): A new bagrid catfish species, Rita bakalu (Siluriformes: Bagridae), from the Godavari River basin, India. Hydrobiologia, 790 (1): 67–81. Rita chrysea F. Day, 1877 Rita gogra (Sykes, 1839) Rita kuturnee (Sykes, 1839) Rita macracanthus H. H. Ng, 2004 Rita rita (F. Hamilton, 1822) Rita sacerdotum J. Anderson, 1879 In addition, the fossil species Rita grandiscutata is known from the Early Pliocene-aged sediments in the Siwalik Hills of Punjab.
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