The accelerating spread of invasive alien species (IAS) represents a critical challenge for biodiversity conservation, agricultural stability, and public health across Europe. In Italy, increasing concern has focused on the expansion of two hornet species: Vespa velutina (the Asian yellow-legged hornet) and Vespa orientalis (the Oriental hornet). While Vespa velutina is an accidentally introduced invasive species that primarily preys on honeybees, the status of V. orientalis is more complex: it has historically been present in Southern Italy but has recently expanded aggressively northward into urban centers, including Trieste. This presentation outlines a comprehensive genetic study aimed at resolving persistent taxonomic uncertainties and tracing the invasion pathways of these hymenopterans within the Italian peninsula. Accurate taxonomic identification is the cornerstone of effective pest management; accordingly, the primary objective of this research is to apply molecular markers to clarify the population structure and genetic diversity of Italian populations of both species. Moreover, we investigate novel molecular markers that can discriminate among V. velutina, V. orientalis, and the native V. crabro (the European hornet), facilitating accurate identification in both ecological studies and applied management frameworks. By employing mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequencing, we aim to provide robust genetic signatures for specimens collected along an urban–agricultural gradient. This phylogeographic approach allows the reconstruction of invasion trajectories, the estimation of the number of introduction events, and the assessment of potential genetic bottlenecks. Furthermore, this research examines the critical intersection between these species and anthropogenic environments. Both invasive hornets exhibit synanthropic behavior, nesting in human-made structures and exploiting urban food waste, thereby significantly increasing the risk of dangerous human–insect interactions. By integrating genetic data with information on nesting sites (urban vs agricultural), we can assess whether specific genotypes are associated with higher levels of synanthropy or aggression. The integration of genetic data with ecological monitoring is proposed as a standardized framework for managing the ongoing expansion of these ecologically and socioeconomically important hymenopterans.
In the 1880s, Islamic art objects were not yet regarded as collectable heritage in the Ottoman state. Although Salomon Reinach (1858–1932) had suggested turning the fifteenth-century Çinili Köşk (Tiled Kiosk) into a museum of ‘Muslim art’ in 1883, this was realised only in 1908, when the building was devoted exclusively to the Islamic art collection of the Imperial Museum (Müze-i Hümâyun). The collection itself had begun to take shape gradually from the 1880s under the direction of Osman Hamdi (1842–1910) and Halil Edhem (1861–1938). In 1939, during the early Republican period, the collection in Çinili Köşk was dispersed, closing this chapter. This paper examines how the formation and display of the earliest Islamic art gallery in the Imperial Museum were shaped through the interplay between the visions and scholarly networks of individual actors and by the broader political and cultural transformations of the late Ottoman and early Republican state. These individuals, shaped by the intellectual currents of their time, simultaneously influenced state cultural policies, redefining the Islamic art collection under the framework of ‘national heritage,’ ‘decorative art,’ and/or ‘masterpieces’ and positioning the museum within internationally recognizable scholarly and curatorial practices. By situating the Imperial Museum’s Islamic art gallery within both local reformist agendas and transnational exchanges, this study argues that it functioned as a site where the collection was reframed in service of nationalism and international recognition.
Indo-Iranian languages and literature, Literature (General)
There are many ways to define Ladakh: geographically (as an area between the Himalayas and the Karakoram), historically (as a kingdom from the 10th century until the Dogra conquest in 1834), or linguistically (as a region sharing a common language—a Tibetan dialect). However, most of these definitions have been put forward by foreigners or officials. Do the inhabitants of these areas feel that they belong to the same community? The author's answer is “no.” He concludes that Shi’as in Kargil and Buddhists in Leh consider themselves to constitute separate communities. The survey draws on sociology, ethnology, and some history, extending back to 1931.
This article examines a mid-seventeenth century Turkish translation of the Persian encyclopaedic work Nuzhat al-Qulūb by Ilkhanid historian Ḥamdallāh Mustawfī Qazvīnī (d. after 744/1344). Composed in the Kurdish emirate of Bidlīs, southwest of Lake Van, at the request of its ruler Abdāl Khān (r. 1031–1074/1622–1664), this translation is extant in two manuscripts, both kept in Ankara’s Millî Kütüphane as MSS A 957 and A 979. I will focus on the translation of the Nuzhat’s botanical section as it appears in MS A 979, and, more specifically, on the plethora of marginal and interlinear notes left by two later readers of the manuscript. These two annotators give the Turkish names of the various plants, which were not provided by the translator, and they also occasionally provide information on their medicinal and pharmacological properties. As a case study on these paratextual elements, this article also contributes to our understanding of translation as a means for the transfer of knowledge in the Ottoman Empire.
Indo-Iranian languages and literature, Literature (General)
Analogously to de Bruijn sequences, Orientable sequences have application in automatic position-location applications and, until recently, studies of these sequences focused on the binary case. In recent work by Alhakim et al., recursive methods of construction were described for orientable sequences over arbitrary finite alphabets, requiring 'starter sequences' with special properties. Some of these methods required as input special orientable sequences, i.e. orientable sequences which were simultaneously negative orientable. We exhibit methods for constructing special orientable sequences with properties appropriate for use in two of the recursive methods of Alhakim et al. As a result we are able to show how to construct special orientable sequences for arbitrary sizes of alphabet (larger than a small lower bound) and for all window sizes. These sequences have periods asymptotic to the optimal as the alphabet size increases.
Sowa Rigpa (Tibetan medicine) has been practiced across vast regions of Central and South Asia for centuries. In this medical tradition, it is common practice to dynamically adapt the mainly herbal formulas according to the regional flora and local conditions, and to use local variants of ingredients. Consequently, one Tibetan ingredient name within a specific formula can signify a variety of therapeutically fitting botanical items, which appear quite different from the perspective of modern taxonomy. This has led many researchers to understand the botanical plasticity of Tibetan medical formulas as misidentifications. We develop an alternative approach, exploring the advantages of this plasticity as a necessary practice to fulfill economic and therapeutic needs. This perspective piece questions the biomedical paradigm of single ‘active substances,’ since botanically unrelated plants with different chemical compositions can be similarly therapeutically effective. From a systems biology perspective, network pharmacology lets us understand the correspondence of illness and medicine as a semiotic process in which herbal formulations act via their ‘pleiotropic signatures’: complex webs of signal pathways that connect and act on multiple levels of organization in the body.
Kunwarikā Devī is one of the forms of Ādi Śaktī (primordial goddess) and is represented as a kanyā (unmarried little girl). She is worshiped both as a child and as a mother goddess in the Garhwal Himalaya. In 2019, there was a significant worship event of the goddess after a gap of 92 years (the previous worship had occurred in 1927). The Devī traveled to different villages to bless devotees and keep them safe. The Kunwarikā Devī worship practice can help illuminate the relationship between regional attachment and divinity, as Uttarakhand is referred to as the dev bhūmi, namely “land of the Gods.” The Kunwarikā Devī worship is located at the intersections of culture and society. The paper elucidates how the history of the Devī, her worship, story, and regional attachment are all connected. It argues that such journeys play a central role in integrating the Garhwali community but do not remove the organizational tensions that mark the Kunwarikā Devī procession. Finally, through detailed descriptions of the preparation and conduct of the worship, we highlight the organizational challenges involved in executing a ritual event on this scale.
Svetlana A. Kirillina, Alexandra L. Safronova, Vladimir V. Orlov
The article analyses the historical role and typological features of the movements for defense of the Caliphate that arose in various parts of the Muslim world as a result of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the abolition of the Caliphate. The liquidation of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924 by the Republican leadership of Turkey put again on the agenda the question of the Muslim unity and transregional cooperation. The authors focus on the new round of socio-political discussions about the unity of the Ummah and the future fate of the Caliphate. The extensive dialogue of the defenders of the idea of Caliphate and supporters of its restoration from different Islamic countries led to the emergence of various ideological approaches to this issue which reflected regional specifics in the interpretation of the essence of this institution in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. Using the vivid example of the Pan-Islamic Congress for the Caliphate in Cairo (1926), the article examines the reasons for disagreements in the political, religious and philosophical matters among the advocates of Caliphate from the main Islamic regions. The article focuses on the difficulties faced by the Islamic thinkers - supporters of the Caliphate in the drastically changed conditions of world geopolitics and the wide spread of ideas of secular statehood. The article investigates the historical and cultural origins of interest in the concepts of the Caliphate among Muslims in various parts of the Islamic world. The article also explores various types of reactions of Muslims in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia to the repudiation of the Caliphate by the Republican Turkey.
In general relativity, cosmology and quantum field theory, spacetime is assumed to be an orientable manifold endowed with a Lorentz metric that makes it spatially and temporally orientable. The question as to whether the laws of physics require these orientability assumptions is ultimately of observational or experimental nature, or the answer might come from a fundamental theory of physics. The possibility that spacetime is time non-orientable lacks investigation, and so should not be dismissed straightaway. In this paper, we argue that it is possible to locally access a putative time non-orientability of Minkowski empty spacetime by physical effects involving quantum vacuum electromagnetic fluctuations. We set ourselves to study the influence of time non-orientability on the stochastic motions of a charged particle subject to these electromagnetic fluctuations in Minkowski spacetime equipped with a time non-orientable topology and with its time orientable counterpart. To this end, we introduce and derive analytic expressions for a statistical time orientability indicator. Then we show that it is possible to pinpoint the time non-orientable topology through an inversion pattern displayed by the corresponding orientability indicator, which is absent when the underlying manifold is time orientable.
Geoff Childs, Sienna R. Craig, Christina Juenger
et al.
“This Is the End” presents findings from research in which the authors asked survivors of Nepal’s 2015 earthquakes to describe what they know about earthquakes based on their lifelong cultural and environmental experiences, how they responded to the devastating events, and how they view these earthquakes and their aftermath in terms of cause and consequence. The research settings of Tsum, Nubri, Manang, and Mustang were in the midst of rapid socioeconomic transformations and environmental disruptions when the earthquakes struck. Interviews shortly after the event reveal that many people are familiar with scientific concepts like the movement of tectonic plates, yet they attribute the earthquake’s ultimate cause to human activities that disturb autochthonous deities. Their interpretations suggest parallels with signs of impending doom contained within written prophesies, including a decline in religious devotion, the fraying of social cohesion, and environmental disruptions. The linking of written prophesies with lived experiences points toward a Buddhist understanding of conventional and ultimate realities in which people discuss the material and geophysical causes and consequences of earthquakes while also considering moral and cosmological understandings stemming from socially and environmentally destructive behaviors. This article contributes to a growing literature on the intersections of religion and natural disasters.
Ali ahmad Shirazi, Reza Chehreghani, Muhammad Iqbal Shahid
Introduction
The long-term historical process that has led to the emergence of a new Western civilization and is today called modernity, has exposed all aspects of human life to change and revision, including the change of social structures and the transformation of the values that govern these structures. One of the most important challenges in entering the modern world in the field of social structures and values that have emerged from the beginning of this historical process and has gone through many ups and downs, regardless of the many conflicts that can be raised in many ways has been the subject of criticism of the patriarchal view that governs the structure and social values of the traditional world and the demand for equal rights for men and women. After the acquaintance of oriental nations with Western modernity and under the influence of Western social developments, this demand was gradually formed among some intellectuals in Islamic and Asian countries, especially educated women and intellectuals, who were mainly poets and writers and led to the emergence of women's writing, including poetry and prose in the literature of these countries. Feminine writing has several components, one of which is the critique of various aspects of the patriarchal social system. Based on what has been mentioned, due to the many commonalities and similarities in cultural, historical and social fields and roots between the Iranian and Pakistani communities, including the traditional and religious interests and contexts along with the social movement towards development and modernity, It seems that women's poetry in Iran and Pakistan, despite slight differences, has many similarities in terms of reflecting women's issues and problems, as well as common feminine feelings and experiences. Therefore, this research tries to compare and analyze the issue of the critique of the patriarchal social system in the works of Simin Behbahani and Fahmida Riaz, two contemporary Iranian and Pakistani female poets, using a comparative approach. Accordingly, the present study is a report of methodical and scientific efforts in order to find answers to the following questions:
- How is the critique of the patriarchal social system seen in the poetry of Fahmida Riaz and Simin Behbahani?
- How can the similarities and differences of the critique of the patriarchal social system in the poetry of the two selected poets be analyzed?
Methodology
This is theoretical research based on written documents and sources, conducted in a descriptive-analytical method and with the approach of sociology of literature has studied the critique of the patriarchal social system in a comparative way in the poetry of Simin Behbahani and Fahmida Riaz.
3.Discussion
In a patriarchal society, a man is a first-class citizen and a woman a second-class one. The context, time, and society in which Simin Behbahani and Fahmida Riaz live are also patriarchal societies, which due to gender discrimination in the social and value system, not only dismiss a large portion of women's inalienable rights, but also they unintentionally and unjustly impose many problems and difficulties on them. In the following sections, the researchers will review and analyze some of these issues that are reflected in the works of these two Iranian and Pakistani poets.
Simin Behbehani
In a patriarchal social structure which is based on the superiority of the male sex, women lack originality and are merely a means of meeting the needs of the superior sex, i.e., women are the means of sexual satisfaction for men. For this reason, in women's writings, this instrumentalistic view of women, which is the result of a patriarchal social structure, is always criticized. Simin Behbahani tells the story of a man who sees a woman merely as a sexual commodity in the poem "Vasteh". Besides this poem, Behbahani in another poem called "The Dancer" narrates the lust of men in a seemingly open society, whose leaders are in the pursuit of modernization and call it the gate of their civilization. Behbahani believes that in a patriarchal society, all forms of freedom have been taken away from women in the name of tradition or under the pretext of modernity. Just as the dancer is trapped in the circle of men's asceticism in the name of freedom and the housewife is also forced to stay home and avoid socialization. In the poem "Zan dar Zindan-e Tala" (Woman in the Gold Prison), Simin complains about the forced residence of the contemporary Iranian woman in the gold palace, without authority, freedom and independence. Other issues that provoke Simin Behbahani's social critique are polygamy and the right of men to divorce, along with various manifestations of male violence and its social consequences, such as, sexual and physical violence, abandonment of children and evasion of responsibility towards the family, as well as forcing girls into marriage, and above all, confronting women not from the perspective of the human element but as a means of men’s satisfaction and reproduction are the most important social problems of women in the patriarchal society of Iran, which are usually depicted in the form of often long poems, with a large number of verses and in a narrative tone and atmosphere. Poems that include such themes in Simin Behbahani’s collection of works, include poems such as Fe’l-e Majhool (The Passive verb), Ilkhan Sitareh-ha (the Ilkhan of the stars), Jibb Bor (the pickpocket), Dard-e Niaz (the pain of need), Anja wa Eenja (here and there), Khoon-e Sabz (green blood), Zarkhrid (Bought), etc., in general her poetic works, such as Jay-e pa (Footprint, 1954), Chelcheragh (Chandelier, 1955), Marmar (Marble, 1961), Rastakhiz (Resurrection, 1971), Khati ze Sor’at va Atash (A Line of Speed and Fire,1980), Dasht-e Arzhan (The Plain of Arzan,1983), Kaghazin Jameh (Paper-Thin Vestment, 1989), Yek Daricheh-e Azadi (A Window to Freedom, 1995) and Tazeh-ha (The Latest, 2008) are scattered.
Although the origins of Behbahani's critique of the patriarchal social system and the patriarchal values that govern Iranian society can be attributed to the feminist ideas, but certainly, this feminism is by no means anti-male and extremist and has a perfectly rational, moderate and balanced basis.
Fahmida Riaz
Fahmida Riaz is also one of the poets who has paid attention to the issues and problems arising from the patriarchal social system for Pakistani women, and this issue is one of the central discourses in the works and especially the poems of this famous Pakistani poet. Fahmida Riaz was born on July 28, 1946, in the city of Meerut. Fahmida grew up in Hyderabad (Pakistan) and her father died when she was 4 years old. During her school years (1960), she composed her first poem and published it in "Fonoon" magazine (Mari, 2004, pp. 14-15). Fahmida got married in 1965, and after marriage, she went to England and published the book Badan Darideh (The Torn Body) (1973) there. She returned to Pakistan a few years later from the United Kingdom and served for some time as the chairman of the National Book Council in Islamabad. When General Zia-ul-Haq came to power, he realized that she was the director of the literary magazine "Avaz". The military government did not come to terms with her and she went to India for several years and did not return until General Zia-ul-Haq was alive (Shams ul-Haqq, 2008, p. 381). Fahmida Riaz, in addition to being a poet, was also a prose writer and translator, and some of her prose works include Karachi, Goodwari, Tem Kabir, Zindeh Bahar, etc. Fahmida Riaz's translations are often from the masterpieces of the world poetry in Urdu (poetry and prose), one of which is Kohli Darichi si (from the open window), a translation of selected poems by Forough Farrokhzad, an Iranian Persian poet. In essence, this expresses the poet's belonging and her acquaintance with the living and dynamic corpus of contemporary Persian poetry (Riaz, 1998, pp. 2-3). She has another book called Ye Khaneh Ab va Gel (This House of Water and Mud), which is a poetic translation of selected lyric poems of Divan Shams-e Tabrizi and indicates his familiarity with classical Iranian literature (Rumi, 2006, pp. 1-2). Shadiani is a story that has been translated into Urdu prose by Fahmida Riaz and this Novel is from the Egyptian Najib Mahfouz who won a Nobel Prize (Mahfouz, 2000, p. 2). Apart from these, she wrote stories such as Qaleh Framosh, Adhora Adami, Halqa meri Zanjir ka, Apna Jurm Sabit hey etc. Fahmida Riaz died on November 21, 2018.
Although Riaz has made a critique of the patriarchal social system in the context of the tradition of its prestige, she has not neglected the imposition of new problems on women, such as freedom. These problems, which sometimes occur in Eastern societies, are doubly severe in political regimes with a capitalist approach, like the United States or France, which is seen as the origin of democracy (Sarvarian, 2004, p. 302). Denying the physical and mental abilities of women and limiting their social function to physical characteristics is one of the topics of concern for Riaz and the poem "The Beauty Contest" is a strong protest against the behaviour in which the female body has become the subject of writers, poets and artists. This poem is about beautiful girls who participate in the beauty contest and there, just by appearance and physical criteria, a worthy girl is selected from the point of view of men.
The poem "Chador and Chardivari" is one of the most important poems of Riaz regarding women's issues in the patriarchal social system, which has addressed various issues in this regard. Part of this poem depicts the oppression of men and their cruel domination over women who have been exploited and sometimes sexually abused for low wages.
Fahmida Riaz describes the captivity of women in the poem "smile of a woman" and so it challenges the idols of the new temple, which are international symbols and demands peace from them.
The poem "Chador and Chahardivari" tells the story of a woman who is forced to wear a hijab to cover herself. But the woman, who is a symbol of the poet herself, cleverly points to more important social priorities and points out the poverty of the society to the rulers. And ironically, he asks them to first bury the shrouded dead who have been left on the ground by the pressure of poverty. In another layer of this poem, the corpse can be considered a symbol of women who in the house of fanatical men have the status of the moving dead who need to be covered more than others.
Other issues such as polygamy of men, types of verbal, physical and psychological violence, forced marriage and social inequalities are other social problems of women in Pakistani society that Fahmida Riaz in its poetic works, like Pathar ki Zaban (Stone Language, 1967), Badan Daridah (the Torn Body, 1973), Dohup (Sunshine, 1976), Kia Tum Pura Chand Na Dikhu Gay (Will You Not See the Full Moon, 1984), Hamarkab (Travel companion, 1988), Admi ki Zindigi (Human Life, 1999), Kulyat-e Fahmida Riaz Sab Lal o Gowhar (Generalities of Riaz called Sab Lal and Gowhar, 2011) have been criticized.
4.Conclusion
The results of the present study on the critique of the patriarchal social system in the poetry of Simin Behbahani and Fahmida Riaz are as follows:
- One of the important topics and discourses in the poetry of Simin Behbahani and Fahmida Riaz is the critique of the patriarchal social system and the moral and social values that govern it and the confrontation with the violation of some social rights of women in Iranian and Pakistani society;
- Due to cultural, historical, religious, social, etc. commonalities that exist between Iran and Pakistan - topics related to the subject of this research were often in common in the works of both poets and were often expressed in a common style (narrative style);
- Although Fahmida Riaz is known as one of the activists of the women's social movement in Pakistan, neither of the two mentioned poets - based on their poetic works - can be considered a feminist poet in its radical and even liberal sense, because the criticisms expressed in their poetry are completely humane and respectful of men while recognizing their rights and they are sometimes accompanied by a critique of the values that govern the liberal-democratic discourse of the New World.
- Simin Behbahani's social criticisms are more superficial, emotional and soft, but Fahmida Riaz's critiques are deep, thoughtful, sharp and reckless, with political connotations and critiques of the ruling power;
- Despite the many thematic similarities in the critique of the patriarchal social system in the works of the two selected poets, the influence of Fahmida Riaz on Simin Behbahani seems very unlikely. But, Fahmida Riaz's influence from Simin Behbahani, due to her fluency in Persian language, complete familiarity with classical Persian poetry and interest in contemporary Iranian poetry, as seen in the introduction of her translations of Shams lyric poems and Forough Farrokhzad's poems in Urdu, is quite probable.
An antimagic labeling of a digraph $D$ with $n$ vertices and $m$ arcs is a bijection from the set of arcs of $D$ to $\{1,2,\cdots,m\}$ such that all $n$ oriented vertex-sums are pairwise distinct, where the oriented vertex-sum of a vertex is the sum of labels of all arcs entering that vertex minus the sum of labels of all arcs leaving it. A graph $G$ admits an antimagic orientation if $G$ has an orientation $D$ such that $D$ has an antimagic labeling. Hefetz, M{ü}tze and Schwartz conjectured every connected graph admits an antimagic orientation. In this paper, we support this conjecture by proving that any forest obtained from a given forest with at most one isolated vertex by subdividing each edge at least once admits an antimagic orientation.
This paper examines the negotiation of religious identity among Sunni Muslim women in Leh, Ladakh. Although Muslims in Leh share the same socio-cultural environment with Buddhists, the differences between the two communities have become more pronounced in recent decades. The assertion of religious identity and increasing religiosity in the form of vegetarianism among Buddhists and strict veiling among Muslim women are fairly visible. Changes are also seen in religious practices, including the imposition of a strict prohibition on dance, music, and alcohol consumption among Muslims. Here, I explore the manner in which religious identity is perceived and propagated among Muslim women in urban Leh. I discuss processes of identity formation and examine the emergence of religion as the most salient source of personal and social identity among Muslim women. The research addresses the question of how women use their agency for religious activities, institutional learning, choice of dress and mobility. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, I depict socio-religious changes among them with reference to dress, mobility and lay sermons. The study discusses the motivations behind these changes and the reasons for Muslim women’s focus on the collective identity that distinguishes them from the wider Ladakhi society.
The act of translation is not a linear and static process but a circulatory and dynamic process that permits an enriching negotiation of meaning. One of the ways in which a text can be translated is by trusting that its meaning can be employed outside the local contexts in which it was produced, and employed to comment on contexts far removed from it in time and space. This trusting then allows for the translated texts to intervene in the negotiations between poly-systems, as marginal poly-systems seek a more pronounced space in the literary and cultural networks in a particular space. This negotiation would constitute the restitution of meaning which is the key to a successful translation. By an analysis of translations, and a close reading of the translated poems, this paper proposes to illustrate this strategy as involved in the production of resistance poetry in Kashmir. Resistance Poetry can be conceived of as a poetry produced to oppose and archive subjectivity produced under conditions of subjugation and occupation – military and politically. In such a scenario, translation can serve as an invaluable tool to illustrate the subjectivities produced under conflict. Through an explanation of the mechanisms of translations of two poems: Nasir Kazmi’s ghazal: Kuch tau ehsaas-e-ziyaan tha pehlay (کچھ تو احساسِ زیاں تھا پہلے) and Saaqi Faruqi’s nazm (a poem in Urdu which is written on a single subject and employs both rhymed, blank and free verse) Khali boray main Zakhmi Billa (بورے میں زخمی ِبلا (خالی. I propose to demonstrate that the latent possibilities and potentialities in the source text can be adequately employed to enrich the Kashmiri English literary poly-system.
The fish genus Notopterus Lacepède, 1800 (Notopteridae) currently includes only one species, the Asian bronze featherback Notopterus notopterus (Pallas, 1769). This common freshwater species is widely distributed in the Oriental region, from the Indus basin in the west, the Mekong basin in the east and Java Island in the south. To examine the phylogeographic structure of N. notopterus across its range, we analysed 74 publicly available cytochrome oxidase I (COI) sequences, 72 of them determined from known-origin specimens, along with four newly-determined sequences from Peninsular Malaysian specimens. We found that N. notopterus is a complex of two allopatric species that diverge from each other by 7.5% mean p-distance. The first species is endemic to South Asia (from Indus basin to Ganga-Brahmaputra system), whereas the distribution of the second species is restricted to Southeast Asia. The exact limit between the distributions of these two species is not known, but it should fall somewhere between the Ganga-Brahmaputra and Salween basins, a region already identified as a major faunal boundary in the Oriental region. The name N. notopterus is retained for the Southeast Asian species, while the name Notopterus synurus (Bloch & Schneider, 1801) should be applied to the South Asian species. A comparative morphological study is needed to reveal the degree of morphological differentiation between the two species.