Taxonomy & naming
Oxynoemacheilus amanos was formally described in 2021 by Kaya, Yoğurtçuoğlu and Freyhof in the journal Zootaxa, one of several new Anatolian stone loaches these authors have split out in recent years as the genus Oxynoemacheilus has been progressively resolved from the old, broad Nemacheilus/Noemacheilus complex. The Catalog of Fishes is the authority for the current combination, Oxynoemacheilus amanos, and no synonyms or prior combinations apply since the species was new to science at description.
The genus Oxynoemacheilus sits in the family Nemacheilidae, the stone or brook loaches, within the loach superfamily Cobitoidea. The species epithet references the Amanos Mountains region of the type locality in Hatay Province, southern Turkey, near the Syrian border and the lower Orontes River basin — a part of Anatolia that has produced several other narrow-range Oxynoemacheilus in the last decade as researchers have surveyed its isolated springs and streams.
Morphology
The type specimens reached about 3 in standard length, consistent with the generally small size typical of Nemacheilidae. The species is described with an incomplete lateral line, its pored portion running 23–45 scales before terminating somewhere between the origin of the dorsal fin and the anus, and with 10–13 pores in the infraorbital canal beneath the eye. The caudal fin is deeply emarginate (forked), and the flanks carry a pattern of dark-brown, irregular vertical bars over a paler ground colour — a fairly typical stone-loach dress for camouflage against gravel and stone.
Unusually for a description note, males of this species were reported to lack the suborbital groove that many congeners show below the eye, a detail used to help distinguish it from close relatives. Like other nemacheilids it is essentially scaleless to the eye — the skin is thin and the scales tiny and deeply embedded — which carries the same medication sensitivity seen across the family, though no aquarium data exists to confirm this directly for O. amanos.
Habitat
Oxynoemacheilus amanos is known only from İncesu spring, a small spring feeding the upper Hupnik drainage, itself a northern tributary of the lower Orontes River near Hassa in Hatay Province, Turkey. The type locality is spring-fed water over gravel, mud and stone substrates. Related Oxynoemacheilus in Anatolian drainages are typically found in moderately fast-flowing to nearly stagnant springs, streams and rivers with similar mixed mud-and-gravel bottoms, and the describing authors expect O. amanos may also occur in nearby slow-flowing streams beyond the type spring itself, though this has not been confirmed.
No direct water-chemistry measurements have been published for this species. Based on breeding-season data recorded for a related Anatolian congener, Oxynoemacheilus bergianus, in similar habitat, a working temperature range of roughly 61–77 °F is a reasonable inference for cool, spring-fed Orontes-basin water, but this figure is borrowed from a relative rather than measured on O. amanos itself, and pH data is simply unavailable.
Feeding
No diet has been published for Oxynoemacheilus amanos specifically. As with Nemacheilidae generally, it is reasonable to expect this is a benthic micro-predator, picking small invertebrates, aquatic insect larvae and other tiny crustaceans off the substrate of its home spring using its low, underslung, barbel-fringed mouth.
Were it ever kept, an aquarium diet modeled on other small Oxynoemacheilus and stone loaches would mean small live or frozen foods — bloodworm, daphnia, brine shrimp — and sinking pellet or wafer foods offered at the bottom, since these fish forage close to the substrate and often ignore food that stays in midwater or on the surface.
Mating
Nothing has been published on courtship or spawning behaviour in Oxynoemacheilus amanos, and no external sexual dimorphism was noted in the type description beyond the male suborbital-groove difference used taxonomically. Data on reproduction in this species is simply absent.
In the absence of direct observation, the pattern documented in related Anatolian Oxynoemacheilus is the best available guide: species such as O. bergianus spawn across a spring-to-summer window (roughly March to late July) once water temperatures move into the high teens and low-to-mid twenties Celsius, consistent with typical stone-loach reproduction tied to seasonal warming in flowing spring water.
Breeding
There is no aquarium breeding record and no field observation of spawning for this species — it has never been kept or bred in captivity as far as published sources show. Based on the biology of Nemacheilidae as a family, the expected mode is an egg-scatterer: ripe adults release eggs over gravel or among stones in flowing water, with no nest-building, no cave-guarding and no parental care of eggs or fry afterward.
This is consistent with stone and brook loaches generally, which are rarely if ever bred in home aquaria — unlike some hillstream loaches (Sewellia) or temperate spined loaches (Cobitis, the dojo Misgurnus), which do have occasional captive-spawning records, Oxynoemacheilus as a genus has essentially no hobbyist breeding history. For O. amanos specifically, the honest position is that breeding biology is unknown and unstudied beyond this inference.
In the aquarium
Oxynoemacheilus amanos has no aquarium-keeping history; it is not in the ornamental trade, and given its Critically Endangered status and single-spring range it should not be collected for the hobby. It is presented here as a species-atlas entry documenting a genuinely narrow-range, data-sparse loach, not as a care recommendation.
Were its needs ever tested, the general expectations for a small Anatolian Oxynoemacheilus would apply: cool-to-mild, clean, well-oxygenated flowing water over a gravel or fine substrate, since these are cool-stream fish rather than warm still-water species. As with other nemacheilids, the near-scaleless skin would be expected to make it sensitive to copper-based medications and full-strength treatments, though this has not been tested for this species.
Conservation
Oxynoemacheilus amanos is assessed as Critically Endangered. The species is known only from İncesu spring in the upper Hupnik drainage of the lower Orontes basin, Hatay Province, Turkey — an extremely small, unprotected water body, which is the basis for its threatened status. The describing authors note the species may also occur in nearby slow-flowing streams, but this has not been confirmed, and no population outside the type spring is documented.
As a single-locality endemic in an unprotected spring, the species is vulnerable to any disturbance of that one water source — abstraction, pollution, drying, or habitat modification — with no known refuge population to buffer against loss of the type locality. It is not part of the aquarium trade, so collection pressure is not a documented factor; the conservation concern here is purely habitat-based and tied to the extreme narrowness of its known range.