Umbee specie separation?
- Thread starter Slaymon
- Start date
A little blast from the past that may help. My comments at the time weren't exactly greeted with open arms by the umbee crowd. lol
Any "Panama Green" Umbee Still Around? | MonsterFishKeepers.com
Any "Panama Green" Umbee Still Around? | MonsterFishKeepers.com
Apparently Jeff Rapps has sampled fin clippings from many of the populations and sent them for DNA analysis.
I believe he thinks there to be 2 or 3 species.
I don’t believe he has reported the findings but I think it was last year that he was collecting and doing so.
He’s never on here anymore but he can be found on the Instagram handle ultimate dream fish
B bigguapote
I believe he thinks there to be 2 or 3 species.
I don’t believe he has reported the findings but I think it was last year that he was collecting and doing so.
He’s never on here anymore but he can be found on the Instagram handle ultimate dream fish
B bigguapote
The issue now is that many of these umbees, from different collection locations, have been bred back & forth willy nilly over the years.
(2) New cichlids! Location F! | MonsterFishKeepers.com
(2) New cichlids! Location F! | MonsterFishKeepers.com
This is correct. Jeff Rapps although retired from importing and exporting is a biologist by education and he still does field work. in June 2021 he was part of a team that collected wild umbie from all known populations and in the process discovered two more populations(along with 3 new Geophagus sp. as well!). One in the Colombia side of the Darian Gap and one from a completely separated watershed that is separated by a mountain range from all other known umbie and that was on the extreme far northeastern corner where VZ and Colombia meet. I will call that the VZ fish for sake of not confusing anyone here lol. The VZ umbie looks somewhat similar to the Rio Magdalena fish but not exactly. perhaps the missing link between the two. The other was much like the Atrato/Guatape umbie. DNA, gps, all of the legal stuff etc, has been officially logged and submitted. Some of the fish collected(umbie and the Geos) were shipped here to my facility at TUIC where they were then sent out and 'pickled' for scientific study to universities. Unfortunatly, the VZ fish did not survive the trip and I received no live specimens. The new Darien fish I was able to keep some live specimens that I have here in house. The Panama side of Darien Gap umbie known as the green umbie is the least colorful of them all but is still super cool in its own right and will likely become THE Kronoheros umbriferus proper. meaning it will be the official 'umbie'. The Atrato and Guatape like fish(there are several) all known to hobbyists as the 'black umbie' are likely a second species and then the popular Rio Magdalena 'Blue umbie' are likely a 3rd species each with separate species names. At least at preliminary findings. Jeff I know will post the conclusions once it becomes official but, as anyone in the field knows. their is never a rush on these things. So it'll be some time.
Jeff Rapps would be the man to ask about this in more depth. As mentioned above he can be found on Instagram as Ultimatedreamfish. if you scroll back to around July or August last year he shared all kinds of photos and tidbits of information on this topic.
and you all thought we only shipped fish
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no problem at all. and yes, many of the 'black umbie' in the hobby have been crossed with each other from different populations. I personally do not think it was done maliciously at first as back then a black umbie was a black umbie. Lets chalk it up as 'we didn't know better' perhaps. 'We' I use loosely.
Today though, we know several populations exist and therefor to the purest they should not be mixed(I agree). I have enough of them here from different locations to know they do not all look the same in pure wild form from exact know locations.