exLamprologus brevis (Boulenger, 1899)
02-Aug.-2012 — Alternative reproductive tactics for 'Lamprologus' brevis
Von Ad Konings
Ota and coworkers (2012) recently published a paper in which they claim that Neolamprologus brevis (= ‘Lamprologus’ brevis) has alternative reproductive tactics (ARTs). Usually we have come to expect excellent field work from this group of Japanese researchers but with this paper they have made an important mistake in my opinion. There is no question about the fact that ‘Lamprologus’ brevis and ‘Lamprologus’ calliurus are two different species and which are sometimes found within a short distance of each other. Males are very simply distinguished by the round tail in ‘L.’ brevis and the truncated (lyre) tail in ‘L.’ calliurus. Not only morphologically do they differ (‘L.’ calliurus gets considerably larger than ‘L.’ brevis) but more importantly do they differ in breeding technique.
In Ota et al.’s paper we find this sentence: “A Lamprologini cichlid, Neolamprologus brevis (a synonym of Neolamprologus calliurus [34]) (sic)…”. First off, they should have written “(N. calliurus is a synonym)” because L. brevis was described seven years earlier and has priority. Then the journal has this awful usage of reference numbers instead of authors and year. Anyway, the ref [34] points to an unpublished thesis by Aibara (2005) to justify the synonymization of these two species, which is of course preceded by Poll who suggested this in 1986, almost 20 years earlier. I have not seen this thesis and it is entirely possible that the fish we all know as ‘L.’ brevis is in fact an undescribed species and the name ‘L.’ brevis should be given to the lyre-tail species (but the authors should have mentioned such an important detail), but the fact remains that there are two different species involved. From the rest of the paper I deduct that the single-shell breeding cichlid, our ‘L.’ brevis, are just subadult individuals (although I have video of females with young in that single shell) and that the larger individuals, our ‘L.’ calliurus, are the adults and they form harems over shell patches made by ‘L.’ callipterus males. None of this is news as this has been reported of these two species before (Konings, 1998), but if you group two species under one name you automatically get alternative reproductive tactics. The only interesting part is now, “Where do I get that Aibara thesis?.
Ota, Kazutaka & M. Aibara, M. Morita, S. Awata, M. Hori, M. Kohda. 2012. "Alternative reproductive tactics in the shell-brooding Lake Tanganyika cichlid Neolamprologus brevis". International Journal of Evolutionary Biology. 2012(915265):1-8. DOI: 10.1155/2012/193235 (crc04503) (Kurzfassung)