Taxonomy has long been guided by natural scientists whose choices, methods, and values shape how biodiversity is named and used today. This study reconstructs the making of one regional fauna, the endemic freshwater fishes now recognized from the territory of the modern Greek state, focusing on the researchers who collected and described these species and how they shaped freshwater fish systematics. We review sources screened...

Nearly one‐third of extant freshwater fish species, which account for over 50% of global fish diversity, are at risk of extinction. Despite their crucial ecological and socioeconomic importance, the extinction of freshwater fishes remains under‐researched on a global scale. This is a comprehensive assessment of taxonomic, spatial, and temporal patterns of freshwater fish extinctions while identifying key extinction drivers and...

A few studies have used historical inland fisheries data for defining reference points necessary for fisheries management. We developed a historical baseline of catches for inland fisheries of Greece during 1928–2019, with the interwar period (1928–1939), a period of intense political and socio‐economic turmoil, serving as a pre‐development reference period. The main harvested species were cyprinids, represented predominantly...

This study provides an annotated checklist of the freshwater fish species recorded in lentic ecosystems of Greece. Species distributional data were derived from an extensive review of published and unpublished sources and were evaluated for their consistency, adequacy and reliability. Overall, 650 freshwater lentic ecosystems (149 natural and 501 artificial) were investigated from which, 480 were fishless or fish data were una...

The rapid decline of the Greek native Valencia letourneuxi, and its recently described sister species Valencia robertae, has been often attributed to habitat degradation, as well as aggression from or resource competition with the alien mosquitofish Gambusia holbrooki. The mosquitofish is extremely wide-spread in Mediterranean freshwater ecosystems, however, documentation on its presumed negative impacts on native freshwater f...

Fish introductions, particularly in areas of high biological diversity and endemism, represent a major threat for biodiversity. In the Balkan Peninsula, 60 fish species have been introduced to date, of which 36 have become naturalized in inland waters. Since the Balkans are one of the world's 35 biodiversity hot spots, this large presence of alien fish species poses a serious threat for the stability of freshwater ecosystems a...