Re: A. sp. aff. juruensis

[Frauley/Elson <fraulels@minet.ca>]

Mike Jacobs wrote:
> 
> Mike........OK, let me see.  For years I was told that A. juruensis had a
> "Fu Man Chu" on his chin.  Now that's out the window........whew!!!  Then
> the article by Romer and Soares in the Cichlid News a couple of years ago
> was not the real A. juruensis.........?  Folks I am NOT trying to holler at
> anyone the least of which would be Soares or Romer but it seems crazy that
> they wouldn't know what they were talking about!  I'm really talking to
> myself here!  Ok...so is the A. sp. aff "juruensis" of my pictures really an
> A. cacatuoides color form???.....with a "Fu Man Chu"......heh, heh, heh!!!
> 
> A.sp. Schwarzkinn (Black-chin) ...........I think my head
> hurts...................then will the real  A. juruensis stand up???  Where
> can we see a picture of it???......is Bork&Mayland pg.80 OK??????...it looks
> to have a black chin!!!
> 
> Mike

INCOMING SOAPBOX WARNING - SOAPBOX WARNING 

Hi Mike,
I've been watching recent developments in Apistogramma 'knowledge', and
I've come to the conclusion it's about to get really crazy. We have a
wealth of new things coming in - last week at an importer's I saw six
unidentified species from Peru, none of which I had never seen before.
I've recently seen a wide range of pertensis types, the usual range of
cacatuoides types and regani, rotpunkt types galore. And since Apistos
are a commerce, much of the essential location knowledge is lost in
collector's trade secrets and lies.
What are we going to do with this? Guess honestly, I suspect. It comes
down to lumpers vs splitters in taxonomy. Were I a scientist, I think
I'd be a lumper (based on the morphology of the fish, which is all I
know how to look at). I'm still not 100% convinced panduro isn't a morph
of njisseni, but that flows from a philosophical approach.
There has been a proliferation of newly described species of killifish,
with the descriptions coming from well-educated European hobbyists. The
scientists in the field are very skeptical, to the point where I've
heard scientists say we should put more emphasis on geogaphic location
than species name, as many of the new species names are going to be
dumped once proper DNA work has been done on them. In effect, were the
many cacatuoides forms killies, then they might well have names, but the
names might well be invalid. So what's the use? "Black chin" is as good
as Juruensis in those terms, as long as we don't end up with 47 names
for black chin, or 47 different black chins ranging from Guyana to Peru.
Apisto naming has been more conservative than killie-work, (Meincken's
difficulties aside) but how it will go is still to be seen. I think we
just have to relax, sit down wherever we keep our fish and open a cold
beer. You can try to figure out exactly which hops are in the beer if
you want, but at the end of the day, just enjoy the whole thing. If you
want to feel good and confused, borrow the Aphyosemions aqualog and look
at the highly studied species Aphyosemion cameronense. It's a show.
-Gary



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