Three new species of the killifish genus from the central Brazilian Cerrado savanna (Cyprinodontiformes, Aplocheilidae).

Three new species are described from the Neotropical region comprising the Cerrado savannas of the central Brazilian plateaus, which is among the most important biodiversity centres in the world. These species are considered closely related to from the same region, with which they share the presence of a rudimentary interarcual cartilage and a dark reddish brown distal margin on the male anal fin. The group comprising and the three new species is here named as the species group. , from the upper Rio Araguaia basin, is distinguished from all other species of the group by the anal-fin colour pattern in males; and from the Rio Paraguai basin are distinguished from all other congeners of the group by the colour pattern of the caudal fin and number of scales in the longitudinal series, respectively. All the new species are further unambiguously diagnosed by unique combinations of morphological characters, including meristic and morphometric data, and colour patterns. This study reinforces the importance of using live colour patterns to diagnose species and species groups of the genus , but also indicates that osteological characters may be informative for species diagnosis. This study confirms the high diversity of species of in the central Brazilian Cerrado plateaus already reported in previous studies, indicating that endemic species are often restricted to short segments of a single river drainage.