Ancistrus temminckii species page

[Karsten S.]

Hi,

the first picture seems to be ok, but without knowing the origin it is difficult to be sure in this genus.
All the other pictures look to me like Ancistrus forms from French Guyana that are not identical to Ancistrus temminckii.


Ancistrus temminckii from Marshall Creek, tributary of Suriname River.

Type locality is "region near Paramaribo, Suriname", I think it will be difficult to find locations that are closer (nowadays) where you can find this species. Furthermore it is quite common in several river systems of Suriname without any significant optical difference, e.g. the size of the spots is identical in all river systems.
However, in French Guyana all populations that I know are easy to distinguish, the closest being the one from Crique Margot close to St. Laurent du Maroni.

Cheers,

[Jools]

All the other pictures, at the time of writing, are from a group that @Yann Fulliquet had some time ago. I think they all came from aquarists collecting in the Crique Margot near St Laurent du Maroni [CMSLM]. But I don't understand what you say about these. I think I am confusing when you say closest perhaps to mean "close-looking" as opposed to close geographically.

Pretty confident the image from @Haakon is correct, so the others, CMSLM, do they have another designation or should I just make them Ancistrus sp. Maroni?

Jools

[Karsten S.]

Hi,

yes, also to my experience Haakon is very knowledgeable and I guess he knew where the fish came from.

I meant both, close-looking as well as geographically close as this is near to the Surinamese border.

Oh, the ones from Yann are all from the same place, interesting. The ones I caught there had a smaller variation in the pattern, probably because those were mostly adults.

I would rather suggest A. sp. "Crique Margot", similarly as with A. sp. "Crique Petit Laussat" (Mana drainage).

In FG there are quite a lot of Ancistrus forms, LeBail et al. 2012 list three species for Maroni drainage (incl. A. temminckii), in total only four for FG, I'm pretty sure that is pretty much due to lumping...

A. temminckii has the same pattern from juvenile to adult, the spots are always small and are also not really fading with age.

Cheers,