A new fish species, Stolephorus tamilensis sp. nov., is described from the East coast of India. The major distinguishing characters are 5-6 small needle-like pre-pelvic scutes on belly; maxilla tip pointed, reaching to border of operculum, concave and indented in the preoperculum; 25-28 gill rakers on lower lobe of the first branchial arch; dorsal fin without spine; 17-19 anal-fin rays. Moreover, S. tamilensis sp. nov. present higher average genetic divergence values at mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I and 16S rDNA loci in comparison with congeners. Also, nucleotide diagnostic characters exclusive to S. tamilensis are identified. Neighbor-joining analysis revealed close relation between S. tamilensis and S. andhraensis.
Keywords: Clupeiformes, Anchovies, Stolephorus, mitochondrial 16S rDNA, DNA barcoding, molecular taxonomy.