Buckelkopf finally named

[Chromedome]

This was just posted over at the cichlidae site, apparently Ottoni & Costa have described Laetacara Sp. "Buckelkopf" as Laetacara araguaiae. Another species name I don't recognize was mentioned in the article, L. minutacara, but I know of no such species.

http://globiz.sachsen.de/snsd/publikationen/vertebrate-zoology/vz59-1/05_Vertebrate_Zoology_59-1_Costa_03.pdf

There is a key to the six described species of Laetacara included in the paper.

 

[Mike Wise]

Thanks for the "heads-up". I've never heard of L. minutacara either. When I get a chance to read the paper, I'll see what I can make out of this. I also noted that the same publication had a description of Nannostomus sp. Purple. It was named N. rubrocaudatus.

 

[a.d.wood]

L. minutacara????

I've looked through the paper and there appear to be 2 references to this species.

1. pg 45, fig 3. Although listed to show the distribution range in the caption, no data presented on the map (also missing from the symbol identifier).

2. pg46, final paragraph. In the redescription of L. dorigera, a reference to the longitudinal scale series of which L. fulvipinnis, L. minutacara and L. araguaiae share the same number (23-25).

Is there another undescribed Laetacara species in the hobby just now and the authors of this paper are working on the description at the same time as this one and left unintended references to L. minutacara in this paper???

Just thinking out loud here with this description....

The paper is based on the description of specimens from the Rio Araguaia. Datz references this species as present in the Rio Xingu and Rio Tapajos as well and makes a point of the fact the populations differ in coloration.

Now, taking Apistogramma agassizii as an example, we have one original description but multiple natural colour variants throughout the distribution range. So, do we have the same situation here (multiple populations in different areas under the one scientific description)???

I just find it strange that with a known distribution range including the Xingu and Tapajos, the paper limits the distribution range to the Rio Verde/Araguaia basin and makes no reference to these other locations.

Or has Datz misreported the distribution????

Andrew

 

[Mike Wise]

No, the DATZ information is correct. L. araguaiae does exist in the named rivers. Kullander found it in the Xingu system, Stawikowski in the Tocantins/Araguaia and the Tapajos. Each river system has a population that differs slightly, but they probably are all the same species.

I think that the reason that Ottoni & Costa listed only the one collecting site is because that is the only place they had collected species. They were also basing the description only on personal collections and not scientific papers. Only 1 scientific paper comes to mind at the moment that enven mentions this species. It is a paper by Dr. Lowe-McConnel on biotopes in the Araguaia. In it she lists a species as L. sp. Purple. I'm pretty sure it's the same as Buckelkopf/araguaiae since it is from the same general vicinity as Ottoni & Costa's fish. All other locations regarding Buckelkopf are from emails (Kullander's to Stawikowski) and hobby articles.

As for L. sp. Minutacara, I can think of 2 possible scenarios:
1) It is a new species that they plan to describe in the future. Somehow it got added to the L. araguaiae description by mistake.
2) It is a name that they were going to give one of the other populations of L. araguaiae. Maybe after the submission of the manuscript the authors realized that it was going to be a junior synonym for L. araguaiae and modified the manuscript before publication. If this is true, they missed a couple of references to the 'species'. Maybe we should ask the aurthor? Their email addresses are on the publication.