Supposedly a breeding pair for $1,000 plus they have young (fry?) from this same pair? So they must have been bred based off this guy's for sale listing.
I am skeptical that this is a
proven breeding pair rather than just a "pair" of animals. Seller says he has access to smaller ones, but it is not clear that he means they are fry from this pair. He says he has photos on request. Anyone on Aquabid fancy asking for them?
Ed, Cesar's pics are already in the Cat-elog under
. I am not sure I have any pics on hand that were taken by Wil or Don.
The Magdalena River Basin and the Lake Maracaibo Basin are separated by the Perija Range, the northernmost tip of the Andes Mountains which separate Northwestern Venezuela and Northeastern Colombia and the Catatumbo River and Magdalena River, though having there watersheds very close to each other, have no connection and are isolated by very high mountand in the central Colombain Andes. Taking into account that these are young mountains from a geological POV...the species may very well have been there before being isolated into the two subbasins.
I think that this is the most likely scenario as well. If
P. cochliodon was already well adapted to the environment when this split happened, the two populations may have not diverged enough from each other to recognize them as distinct spp. even though they have been separated a long time.
This has happened throughout the Magdalena, Maracaibo and Orinoco basins. 42 of the 84 spp found in the Catatumbo also occur in the Magdalena and 28 sp found in the Catatumbo are also found in the Orinoco. 11 spp are found in all three drainages.
Just as sharing spp can link two drainages, the absence of major groups of fishes can say even more. In this case, the Magdalena and the Maracaibo are both "missing" the same major groups (i.e. there are no
Corydoras in either drainage). I say absence has even more impact in understanding these relations because shared spp could also have been introduced at some point by humans or even natural means.
-Shane
"My journey is at an end and the tale is told. The reader who has followed so faithfully and so far, they have the right to ask, what do I bring back? It can be summed up in three words. Concentrate upon Uganda."
Winston Churchill, My African Journey
