Re: A. sp. aff. juruensis

[Mike & Diane Wise <apistowise@bewellnet.com>]

Frauley/Elson wrote:

> 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.

Gary,

Thanks to Marco, Julio, & many of the hobbyist collectors from Germany we now know
more about where fish originate than at any time in the past. But I admit apistos
are coming in faster than they can be published in the hobby.

> What are we going to do with this?

Grin and bear it I guess.

> Guess honestly, I suspect.

As long as everyone uses a logical system we can at least get close to what a
species is.

> 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).

Me too, for the most part. That's the difference between us hobbyists and
professional taxonomists. The latter use so much more than external features now.
This is why so few new species are being scientifically described. We have the
preserved species, collecting/biotope data, etc. It just requires so much time and
effort (= money) to adequately describe an apisto these days. In 1980 Kullander
took about 5, half size, pages to describe most of his new species. Now it take 3x
the text space to do the same thing (e.g. Römer's description of A. arua took
about 8, full size, pages of text plus an additional 2 1/2, full size, pages of
photos and figures. The reason is because Uwe had to go into much more detail to
compare his new species with the many more similar species that are now known. As
the number of new forms increases, the length of descriptions will also increase.
All we can do is accept the common names and hope we don't duplicate names or give
a species more than one name.

> I'm still not 100% convinced panduro isn't a morph
> of njisseni, but that flows from a philosophical approach.

They are sibling species but you are looking only at the color pattern. The shape
& length of the jaws and dorsal fins on both males and females are different.
Cross breeding experiments show that they will cross breed only when there is no
member of their own species available. This occurs with many closely related
species.

>
> There has been a proliferation of newly described species of killifish,
> with the descriptions coming from well-educated European hobbyists.

This is a very good reason for not allowing hobbyist to go wild scientifically
describing new species - especially in nonjuried publications. Kullander is an
extremist on this point.

> 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.

Sounds reasonable to me. Species like A. resticulosa  and A. agassizii (sensu
lato), on the other hand, will probably go the other way and be broken up into
several different species.

> 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.

The Black-chin species is distinct enough to NOT be considered A. juruensis (sensu
stricto) at this time. I would prefer a name like "A. sp. aff. juruensis
(Schwarzkinn/Black-chin)" be used to describe it. If, at a later time, it's found
to be just a population of A. juruensis all we need to do is remove the "sp. aff."
part of the name. I know you are using this species only as an example, but there
are many other species (sensu lato) in the genus with distinct population/sibling
species, too. The whole resticulosa => taeniata species complex easily comes to
mind. We could have only 1 variable species of a dozen or more distinct ones. It
will require a lot of detailed collecting and most likely DNA work to determine
this. Because of this I prefer to keep my populations/strains pure. I don't mix
them knowingly. I also don't buy fish that don't have known collection locales.
Domestic color/fin enhanced strains are an exception, of course. This is my
choice. I don't expect everyone to follow my lead however.

>
> 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.

I agree. We have to be careful. Until then, common names describing a collecting
location or a special characteristic would be best for now. Let's not get "hung
up" on having to have a valid species name for each fish we have.

Mike Wise

> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> This is the apistogramma mailing list, apisto@listbox.com.
> For instructions on how to subscribe or unsubscribe or get help,
> email apisto-request@listbox.com.
> Search http://altavista.digital.com for "Apistogramma Mailing List Archives"!





-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the apistogramma mailing list, apisto@listbox.com.
For instructions on how to subscribe or unsubscribe or get help,
email apisto-request@listbox.com.
Search http://altavista.digital.com for "Apistogramma Mailing List Archives"!