Alburnoides prespensis

Alburnoides prespensis, the Prespa spirlin, is a small freshwater ray-finned fish of the family Leuciscidae, which includes the daces, minnows and related fishes. It is endemic to the Balkans, living only in the drainage basin of the Prespa lakes, which straddles the borders of Albania, Greece and North Macedonia. Within that basin it is found in the littoral zone of the lake and in the streams and rivers flowing into it, where it prefers clear, flowing, well-oxygenated water. The Bosnian Serb ichthyologist Stanko Karaman described it in 1924 as a subspecies, Alburnoides bipunctatus prespensis, from Lake Prespa, and it is now recognised as a valid species in the genus Alburnoides, closely related to the schneider, Alburnoides bipunctatus. It is told from other spirlins by a terminal mouth with only a slightly slanted cleft, ten to eleven and a half branched anal fin rays, and 40 to 43 scales along the lateral line. Its maximum total length is 13.1 centimetres.