| Rita Temporal range: Lower Pliocene to Recent
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|---|---|
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| Rita rita | |
Scientific classification 
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| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Actinopterygii |
| Order: | Siluriformes |
| Superfamily: | Bagroidea |
| Family: | Ritidae Bleeker, 1858 |
| Genus: | Rita Bleeker, 1853 |
| Type species | |
| Pimelodus rita Hamilton, 1822
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Rita (from the Bengali name of Rita rita),1 commonly known as velvet catfishes, is a genus of catfish found in South Asia. It is the only member of the family Ritidae.2 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.3
Species
There are currently 7 recognized species in this genus:
- Rita bakalu K. K. Lal, Dwivedi & R. K. Singh, 2016 4
- 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.5
References
References
- "Family RITIDAE Bleeker 1862 (Ritas and Nanobagrids)". The ETYFish Project. 2024-04-15. Retrieved 2025-04-12.
- Fricke, R.; Eschmeyer, W. N.; Van der Laan, R. (2025). "ESCHMEYER'S CATALOG OF FISHES: CLASSIFICATION". California Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 2025-02-10.
- Ng, H.H. (2004): Rita macracanthus, a new riverine catfish (Teleostei: Bagridae) from South Asia. Zootaxa, 568: 1–12.
- 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.
- Ferraris, Carl J. (2007-03-08). "Checklist of catfishes, recent and fossil (Osteichthyes: Siluriformes), and catalogue of siluriform primary types" (PDF). Zootaxa. 1418 (1): 1–628. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.1418.1.1. ISSN 1175-5334.