Scientists confirmed that lithogenes wahari shares traits with two different families of fish: the bony armor that protects its head and tail, and a grasping pelvic fin that allows it to climb vertical surfaces. It is told that the characteristics in Lithogenes suggests to ichthyologists Scott Schaefer of the American Museum of Natural History and Francisco Provenzano of the Universidad Central de Venezuela that the common ancestor of the Loricariidae and Astroblepidae probably could grasp and climb rocks with its tail and mouth.
Schaefer, a curator in the Division of Vertebrate Zoology at the Museum, informed that the fish was so strange in morphology that it did not fit into any taxonomic category that we were aware of. He also said that it looked like it was run over by a truck. We needed better specimens. It is true that the identification of the species took years but the team collected L. wahari after several trips further and further into the headwaters of the Río Cuao, a tributary of the Río Orinoco. They literally picked 84 specimens off of rocks.
After much study it is confirmed that the species is a member of a group that bridges two catfish families. Bony plates on both its head and tail, plus other features, link the species to the Loricariidae, a widespread and successful family of fully armored catfishes. Schaefer and Provenzano propose that L. wahari is the third known species in the subfamily Lithogeninae, and that the specialized features shared among the three species confirms their placement within the family Loricariidae at the base of this large radiation of catfishes.
