Diagnosis: Distinguished from its congeners by the conspicuously banded dorsal fin; presence of fleshy excrescence on posterior tip of supraoccipital; typically 9 branched dorsal-fin rays (rarely 8 or 10); and evertible cheek plates with 2-4 hypertrophied odontodes. Chaetostoma changae differs from species described from the same drainage as follows: C. breve has 5-8 and C. dermorhynchum 4-5 hypertrophied odontodes on evertible cheek plates (vs. 2-4); C. carrioni does not have adipose and anal fins (vs. presence); C. dermorhynchum has 5 ramified anal-fin rays (vs. 3-4); C. branickii, C. lineopunctatum, C. loborhynchos, C. marcapatae,

C. marmorescens, C. mollinasum, C. sericeum, and C. taczanowskii have 6 infraorbital plates (vs. 7) and first anal-fin ray with 2 or more rows of odontodes along its anterior border (vs. first anal-fin ray without odontodes); C. greeni, C. marcapatae and C. sericeum have a wide interorbital width: 37.048.0% HL (vs. 28.3-32.4% HL) and numerous hypertrophied odontodes on evertible cheek plates: 7-12 (vs. 2-4); branickii has a reduced triangular sphenotic (vs. square); lineopunctatum has dark spots on body (vs. uniformly pigmented); loborhynchos, marmorescens, mollinasum, taczanowskii exhibit rounded papillae on the naked snout (vs. irregularly shaped papillae) and straight hypertrophied odontodes on evertible cheek plates (vs. hooked); loborhynchos, marmorescens, mollinasum, and taczanowskii

lack the longitudinal fleshy excrescence on the posterior tip of the supraoccipital, a fleshy projection on the middle third on the anterior soft border of dentary, and contact between sixth infraorbital and suprapreopercle (Ref. 56969).