Photos of X. sp. red princess in its natural habitat

[Tachymarptis]

What an exciting discovery! Congratulations Adrian! Next time, we do not accept you here if you don't show us photos of the living fish!

Patrick

[Mark Smith]

Adrian

According to the formal description of Baileychromis centropomoides, it has a noticeably wide mouth, almost shovel-like. Do you have a top, or bottom photo of the head/snout you could post?

[Mark Smith]

Hi Adrian

Another query - Your image of what you are identifying as Plecodus elaviae - are you sure it is this species? In a paper that came out in 2007, entitled: Evolutionary history of Lake Tanganyika's scale-eating cichlid fishes, by Koblmuller, Egger, Sturmbauer, and Sefc, in Molecular Phylogenetics And Evolution, 44 (2007) 1295-1305, it mentions an undescribed Plecodus species, identified as Perissodus eccentricus-like. Being as that P. elaviae is more closely related to P. paraxodus than to P. eccentricus, and since your specimen looks quite similar to P. eccentricus, I cannot help but wonder if your photo represents this undescribed Plecodus species, or perhaps is P. eccentricus itself?

Any thoughts/opinions out their??

[Mark Smith]

One last thing to mention. In the official description of P. eccentricus in, Evolution of the Scale-Eating cichlid Fishes of Lake Tanganyika: A Generic Revision with a Description of a New Species, Bulletin Of The Museum of Comparative Zoology, volume 14, number 7, Feb. 12, 1976, on page 323, says: "in preserved specimens, pelvic and anal fins clear, dorsal and caudal fin with faint grey mottling." Also, the shallowest depth that this species was recorded was 60 meters, or nearly 200 deep.

The photos in Konings identified as P. eccentricus show a fish with a heavily patterned dorsal fin, and photographed in much shallower water.

[Mark Smith]

Pardon this addition...

Dorsal fin spines for P. eccentricus are from 14 to 15. The fish in the photo has at least 17...

[Adrian Indermaur]

Hy Mark,

sorry the late reply, was pretty busy these days.

Some interesting points you mention! First I have to say that I'm far from beeing an expert in this group, nevertheless I'm starting to read into it.
To my picture at first you made me a bit insecure about the identity of the fish. In the end now I'm pretty convinced the fish is P. elaviae. What I read about P. eccentricus it really should look different and the spine counts really convinced me. Thinking of P. eccentricus only beeing found below 60 meters, I dont think many people have ever seen it. Having said this, I also think the pictures by Ad for P. eccentricus acctually show P. microlepis (at least 17spines on one pic).
Concerning the eccentricus like fish I cant say a lot. I'm currently reading the paper again and I will contact Stephan (Koblmüller) to ask him about the sample and if he has a picture thereof.
I will let you know if I find out more... For the moment I rest convinced the fish in the picture is P. elaviae.

Greets Adrian

[Mark Smith]

Good to hear back from you Adrian

You may very well be right on the identity of your P. elaviae. It will also be interesting to find out what comes of your corrrespondance with Koblmuller regarding Perissodus sp. "eccentricus-like". It shouldn't be too surprising to know that there seems to be similar looking, or cryptic species, to those that are already formally described. Perhaps Konings photo of P. eccentricus is actually Perissodus sp. "eccentricus-like". Perhaps in Koblmuller has a photo of this undescribed species, he would be willing to let Cichlidae.com post it?

[Adrian Indermaur]

Hy Mark,

unfortunately no news yet from the Perissodines. But I just found some pictures to your question about the broadend jaws of Bailychromis centropomoides.
As it seems to me the jaws is not narrow at all but also doesn^t seem to be broadend a lot. I hope you can see enough on the pictures.

Cheers

Adrian

[Mark Smith]

Thanks Adrian, good and revealing shots from you as usual!

The mouth appears to be somewhat broadened, but not as much as I was assuming based upon the formal description. Perhaps there is some shrinkage after death and somewhat drying out?

Also, I noticed that the pectoral fins are rather long, a feature commensurate with its preferred habitat/hunting preference?

[Adrian Indermaur]

Hy Everybody,

I was going through and comparing some of Heinz Büschers specimens in his collection today and got some new insights in the Perissodini.
The picture of the deep water scale eater further up in the thread in my opinion shows the true P. eccentricus. From what I see it has a rather low number of dorsal spines no vertical stripes in the caudal fin and no fin filaments. Nevertheless a secure statement could only be done after an examination of the teeth. The fish in picture also apears to somehow mimic Benthochromis sp.
These deep water scale eaters really are a fascianting group well worth getting into...

I add a figure of all the described species for comparison, the resolution is a bit low but 250 is just not enough here. PN if you want it:

Have a nice day

PS: @ Thomas: I also examined a larger individual of B. centropomoides from Heinz collection and it showed pronounced broadening along the lower jaw... pictures follow tomorrow...

[Adrian Indermaur]

Hy,

I just wanted to add two pictures of the Baileychromis jaws with the mentioned broadening as mentioned in the description.

Greets

Adrian

[Benoit]

Thanks very much for all Adrian.

[Adrian Indermaur]

Hy everyone,

some updates on the various topics in this thread.

This autumn we did some dives at the famous Chituta Bay deep habitat. The Neolamprologus shown further up in my opinion is N. cf. ventralis. Since the description of the type material is from Tembwe in Congo, further investigation is needed to confirm if this is in fact a geografical variant of N. ventralis or a related but distinct species. Further there are reports from a variant from the western escarpement in Zambia. This variant exhibits in contrast to the more patchy melanin pattern a striking vertical striping.
I found the Chituta variant to be quite common at the transition zone from rocks to muddy bottom. A really beautiful fish with intriguing behavior and we were even lucky enough to also catch some.

Concerning the scale eater species above in evert's pic, I am quite sure it is the real P. eccentricus. I found some individuals on the MPU fish market.

Based on the descriptions the drawings above and comparisons of everything that is countable in the pics the fish posted further up is P. elaviae in deed and the fish in evert's picutres and the one here are P. eccentricus. Note the yellowish throat, the fin formula and shape and the size of the eye...

... and here some more pics of fish that we caught in the depths of Chituta Bay or found on the fish market:

a freshly caught B. tricoti

X. "flourescent green" / nasus?

another larger B. centropomoides

X. hecqui

Also we were able to observe G. christy, G. bellcrossi and T. otostigma. All in all Chituta Bay, due to its special topography, seems to be a place where we can find many strictly deep water species that usually reside in the very deep realms of the lake in relativley shallow waters... (30m+) Not really news but still cool stuff!

Greets

Adrian

[Thomas Andersen]

Further there are reports from a variant from the western escarpement in Zambia. This variant exhibits in contrast to the more patchy melanin pattern a striking vertical striping

Yes, but only the males have these stripes I understand, females look the same?

I think you are right, Evert's scale-eater photo is a P. eccentricus - cool!

[Benoit]

Adrian

Hello, just a question, this fish would not it be true N. wauthioni?

[Thomas Andersen]

Yes, I think so too.

[Mark Smith]

Intriguing possibility. Possibly the striped species may end up being N. wauthioni? A good starting point would be to examine the N. sp. "Ventralis Kasanga" (your picture posted on this thread, Adrian) and see if it keys out to N. wauthioni, and then someone? catching the striped one to examine, and photograph. I would at least love to see a photo of this striped one.

[Adrian Indermaur]

Hy guys,

an interesting thought indeed. I think nevertheless the fish in my picture is somekind of N. cf. ventralis as is the stripped variant (the one north of Katoto right?) I just downloaded the description of N. wauhthioni and it seems that my fish agrees in some points of morphometrics but disagrees in some others... What really bothers me are the size of the eyes the shape of the caudal fin and the overall body proportions. Also the stripeing of the N. ventralis types (fine narrow stripes) looks nothing like the blotchy pattern on N. wauthioni in the description or the type specimen in the catalog. Any of you now the exact type locality of N. wauthioni?

If not the same thing they might be very closely related....

Poll 1946

Untitled.png (190.81 KiB) Viewed 306 times

http://www.cichlidae.com/gallery/species.php?id=798

Greets Adrian

[Mark Smith]

a 1 km de la cote, entre le camp Jaques (Albertville) et Katibili

[Thomas Andersen]

Adrian, have you read Büscher's article on N. wauthioni? A most interesting read, apparently N. wauthioni and N. ventralis are very closely related:

Büscher, H.H. (2007) Neolamprologus wauthioni – ein verschollener Buntbarsch aus dem Tanganjikasee. DATZ, 60: 58–61.