Austrolebias varzeae n. sp. is described from rio da Várzea floodplains, upper rio Uruguay basin, southern Brazil. It seems to be closely related to A. carvalhoi (Myers), with which it shares a similar color pattern of male and an apomorphic morphology of the autopalatine. The new species differs from A. carvalhoi by having more anal-fin rays in males and more caudal-fin rays. Austrolebias varzeae is distinguished from all other species of the genus by a unique color pattern, in which there are three distinctively darker and narrower bars on the anterior portion of male flank. Putative close relationships between A. varzeae and A. carvalhoi suggest a closely related biogeographic history between upper Uruguay and upper Iguaçu River basins, corroborated by a biogeographic pattern of the anablepid genus Jenynsia.
New species; killifishes; systematics; Neotropical
