melanurus or synspilus?

[darippa]

Good lookin fish. All the pics from that site you redirected us to are not Melenarus. Not even close. True Melanarum have elongated bodies and are completly orange. No red in the head what so ever. Hard fish to find these days.

 

[nutty]

Good lookin fish. All the pics from that site you redirected us to are not Melenarus. Not even close. True Melanarum have elongated bodies and are completly orange. No red in the head what so ever. Hard fish to find these days.

The melanura that you are refering to are the population from Lake Peten, Adults certainly don't look elongated . I used to keep a group of wild caughts from this lake and indeed they are orange. However we are told there are variations. Carl Hubbs seperated the two species by the caudal bar. Melanura being straight pointing to the eye and synspila having a slight downward slope. Is this enough to seperate two species?? Don't forget melanura was described first, so if synspila are just geographical varaiations of melanura, then the first described fish stands. Look at all the different variations in synspila, there is no particular holotype. Don Conkel used to offer a race of melanura from Rio San Pedro, these were very similar to synspila with pink head, but the caudal bar on these fish were straight. Paratheraps bifasciatus is another fish with very interesting geographical variation.

Indeed the Lake peten population are very interesting with their unique colouration. Could this contained gene pool be feeding on foods in the lake that causes the pigmentation?

Regards,

Lee.