New group of 6 Microglanis iheringi... or are they? SPAWNED!

[bekateen]

Mees' fish above may be imported given the locality but it is also most certainly not iheringi.

Hi Shane,

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you here, but if Mees described M. iheringi, and if this is his holotype, how can this not be M. iheringi? If the problem is that the fish does not match other Microglanis from the type locality proposed by Mees, then which is wrong, the type specimen or the type locality?

Thanks, Eric

[Shane]

I think we missed each other here. Gomes, not Mees, described M. iheringi from the Rio Tuy basin in Venezuela. Mees found a Microglanis sp in the Meta basin in Colombia (separated from the Tuy basin by the Andes) and made the mistake of trying to match it to something already described. The closest thing he could find was Gomes' fish so he mistakenly came to the conclusion the were a match.
This type of mistake was very common when species descriptions were not very detailed and information hard to come by (no internet!) which is why we have so many occurrence records for spp that are illogical.
The other issue that permeates much older taxonomic works is what I call the "Noah's Arc Factor." Researchers defaulted to matching their finds to already described spp rather than starting with the assumption they had found something new. This was because they simply could not understand the massive biodiversity they were dealing with. Researchers today are far more likely to start with the assumption when exploring a new system that the fishes are likely to be new and unique.
There is however a downside to this as well. We are seeing lots of "Activist Taxonomy" which is describing every single thing found as new in order to bolster environmental protection efforts. The sentiment is noble but I am not sure this type of taxonomy is furthering systematics.
-Shane

[Shane]

This may very well be iheringi from the Tuy basin. It matches closely to the only line drawing I have seen of a specimen actually collected from the Tuy system near El Hatillo.
From Roman's 1992 Peces Ornamentales de Venezuela.
-Shane

[bekateen]

I think we missed each other here. Gomes, not Mees, described M. iheringi from the Rio Tuy basin in Venezuela. Mees found a Microglanis sp in the Meta basin in Colombia (separated from the Tuy basin by the Andes) and made the mistake of trying to match it to something already described. The closest thing he could find was Gomes' fish so he mistakenly came to the conclusion the were a match.

Hi Shane,

Sorry about the confusion there - it was me having a (hopefully premature) senior moment. Yes, I am aware that Gomes described M. iheringi instead of Mees (after all, I wrote that in a comment earlier in this thread, so obviously I knew that). However, when I read your comment about the picture above not being the type specimen, and the reference to Mees, my mind linked Mees as the scientist while simultaneously I was thinking about the photo of Gomes holotype instead of the drawing provided by Mees. So my confusion came by conflating Mees with Gomes' photograph and inferring that you were saying the photograph was not the holotype.

As for everything else you wrote, yes that makes sense. And since the Mees drawing is from Colombia, that fish may well be the same as the Colombian fish I am seeing imported to the USA today. It certainly looks similar.

This may very well be iheringi from the Tuy basin. It matches closely to the only line drawing I have seen of a specimen actually collected from the Tuy system near El Hatillo.
From Roman's 1992 Peces Ornamentales de Venezuela.
-Shane

Thank you for the photo from the book. Very interesting. Looking at the heavily pigmented fins and darker body, it resembles the smaller fish I have with the wood-grained sides, spotted fins and the U shaped brown saddle under the dorsal. But if they are similar, my fish are still small. According to Gomes, M. iheringi gets larger, the size of my bigger yellow fishes.

As an unrelated issue, and because I know of no better place to put this, today I came upon a publication that shows the ovaries of a Colombian/Venezuelan Microglanis (predictably labeled "M. iheringi"). Here's the photo.

Microglanis iheringi – Yanis Cruz ©

I share it for curiousity purposes and reproductive reference than for its photographic quality and aid in taxonomic identification. The chapter describes reproductive habits of the ornamental fishes in the region and states that Microglanis from the Arauca region are a high fecundity genus breeding repeatedly during the breeding season. The chapter doesn't explicitly link the photographed Microglanis to Arauca, but their graph showing ovarian status includes Microglanis iheringi in the legend.

Figure 4.22. Monthly behavior of general gonadal maturation for the analyzed species from the Arauca region (N = 2797). 7 sp .: Apteronotus albifrons, Brachyhypopomus brevirostris, Corydoras habrosus, Eigenmannia virescens, Microglanis iheringi, Otocinclus cf. vestitus, Platydoras armatulus, Thoracocharax stellatus. (1) Immature, (2) Maturing, (3) Mature, (4) Spawned.

Here is text from the chapter:

The number of specimens analyzed in the different groups of fish in the Arauca region is relatively low compared to those in other regions, due to the low species richness and lower volumes of capture of ornamental fish recorded for this region. The data analysis of gonadal maturation stages shows a maturation peak in May for the Gasteropelecidae Family (Figure 4.19), while in the Loricariidae (Figure 4.20) and Callichthyidae (Figure 4.21) families, no mature specimens were observed, probably due to the small sample size. The analysis of the gonadal maturation stages for all the Fish Families in the Arauca region shows a reproductive peak in the months of May and June (Figure 4.22), coinciding with the current closed period for the Orinoco river basin.

... Species with high fecundity tend to produce waves of maturation with partial spawning at intervals of days or weeks during the reproductive season.

Reference:
Ortega-Lara, A., Y. Cruz-Quintana, y V. Puentes. (Eds.). 2015. Dinámica de la Actividad Pesquera de Peces Ornamentales Continentales en Colombia. Serie Recursos Pesqueros de Colombia – AUNAP. Autoridad Nacional de Acuicultura y Pesca –
AUNAP ©. Fundación FUNINDES ©. 174 p.

[bekateen]

And I found an overhead photo of M. iheringi collected in Venezuela, but sadly the digital quality is poor.

Alcala, Carlos Andres Lasso. (1996). Composicion y aspectos bioecologicos de las comunidades de peces del Hato el Frio y Cano Guaritico, Llanos de Apure, Venezuela. Doctoral thesis. Dept Biol Vegetal y Ecologica, Universidad de Sevilla.

Of course, being from the Apure drainage, these fish might be more similar to the Colombian fish than the Turmero fish. Perchance, anyone have access to the original thesis? (Just kidding)

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

I came across this photograph in another paper (ref below). This fish was collected in the Casanare drainage of Colombia. This specimen is the spittin' image of the small, more pointy tailed specimens I have with the wood grained base color and pigmented fins.

Zamudio, J. et al. (2017). Ichthyofauna of piedmont and savannah environments in the Casanare River drainage, Orinoco Basin, Colombia. Biota colombiana, 18(2): 199-211. https://doi.org/10.21068/c2017.v18n02a13

Also, there is a photo (HERE or http://repository.humboldt.org.co/bitst ... /37378.JPG) of an almost identical fish (small, wood-grained, pointed tail) from the Caño Guanapalo, just up the Meta from the Rio Casanare.

The only notable difference - and maybe it's just a photo distortion is that this fish may have a pale spot in the middle of the brown saddle under the dorsal fin. Am I imagining it? Is it a photo artifact? IDK.

[Bas Pels]

Can't say I see any white spot in this saddle.

The edges are white, but that looks like an artifact to me.

[Shane]

Eric,
Just another curveball... It is also possible that fish from the llanos and Amazonas were mixed by the exporter. I.e. We could be looking at a llanos (Orinoco) basin fish mixed with a sp from the Amazon exported from Leticia. The "woodgrain" sp appears to me to be from the llanos based on the above citations.
-Shane

[bekateen]

@Bas Pels, I added the photo of the second fish in case it wasn't clear which I was talking about regarding the pale spot.

@Shane, I can imagine that. Thanks.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

When these two fish from the Meta drainage are juxtaposed, there's actually a lot more difference than I first noticed.

• I've already mentioned hat I see as a pale spot in sub-dorsal saddle on the Caño Guanapalo specimen, vs. a solid dark saddle on the Rio Casanare fish. I'm convinced now that the pale spot is real. This is also seen in species such as
  Microglanis carlae
  ,
  Microglanis leptostriatus
  , and
  Microglanis parahybae
  to name just three.
• The shape of the subdorsal saddle is also different, with Rio Casanare fish having the U shaped saddle typical of my fish, and the Caño Guanapalo having a more angled saddle, sloping ventro-posteriorly at a sharp angle, parallel to the front edge of the thick ventro-posteriorly sloping subadipose mark just anterior to the adipose fin. On this same fish, the subdorsal saddle is more of a pair of lines which unite at top and bottom, like this: [>, creating the pale hole in the center.
• The dark subadipose mark on the Rio Casanare fish is thin and more of a y shape with its posterior line slanting postero-dorsally, whereas the dark subadipose mark on the Caño Guanapalo fish is thick (already mentioned) and more of a \| shape, with its posterior line nearly vertical.
• The dark vertical bar on the Rio Casanare fish appears to be thinner horizontally (relative to the height of the caudal peduncle) than the same mark on the Caño Guanapalo fish.
• I suspect trivially, on the Caño Guanapalo fish, there are dark pigmented bridges between the subdorsal, subadipose and caudal peduncle dark saddles/bars.

Either there's just a lot of individual (or population) variation within one species, or even these are different types. I'm leaning towards the former considering how close they are in proximity, but I'm not willing to rule out the latter.

For reference, I added a photo of one of my woodgrained fish scaled to the same size. As mentioned above, very similar to the Rio Casanare fish. Now I'll need to examine all of my woodgrained fish to see if they show the variation in those posterior markings. I know already none have the pale spot in the middle of the saddle under the dorsal fin.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Okay, I spend way too much time staring at my fish. Looking at some of my woodgrained individuals, I can see at least two who have developed small light colored patches in the middle of those brown U shaped subdorsal saddles. None have the angularity of the specimen from the Cano Guanapalo, but the presence of the breaks in the brown area tell me that these may mature with time. I know I didn't see any when I first bought them.

Cheers, Eric

[Shane]

Here is the iheringi holotype. Compare to Roman's photo.
-Shane

[bekateen]

Thanks Shane!

I tried to bring out the pigmentation subtleties (not so much the colors but the boundaries of the colors) and I'm juxtaposing it against Roman's photo and the B&W holotype pic from the Gomes paper, along with the Meta fish and mine.

Hopefully this is informative.

Cheers, Eric

[Shane]

Wow, awesome job!
Two features that jumped out at me looking at the holotype and Roman's fish.
The saddle over the nape does not extend past the mid point of the dorsal fin and is straight, not rounded. The saddle at the caudal peduncle lacks the dorsal lateral light colored marking.
To my eye, and this is based on single photos, pics 1 and 2 are possibly the same sp. Pic 3 is unique. Holotype matches quite closely with Roman's photo.
-Shane

[bekateen]

Thanks Shane. Yes I agree. One thing clearly visible on the type specimen, on Roman's specimen and on the fish in fig 3 is this: On the dark saddle on the caudal peduncle, there is clearly a superdense pigmented line right along the tail base, with a slightly lighter pigmentation more anteriorly in the same dark band. That is a common trait in several Microglanis species, but I don't see it on my specimens (my fish, both kinds, seem to be homogeneously colored in that caudal saddle).

On a whim, I did two things today.

• First, I identified a Venezuelan Ichthyologist named Dr. Hector Lopez teaching at a university in Caracas, not too far from Lake Valencia, and I emailed him to see if he could be of help. I know the situation in Venezuela is not great now, but what the heck? Might as well try.
• Second, I picked out one of my very fat female wood-grained fish and took photos in front of a window for natural lighting, both with and without the overhead fluorecent lighting on.

This female is 50 mm SL. Note that this fish has the pale blemish in the middle of the subdorsal saddle. She also has a brown bridge connecting the subadipose and caudal saddles; I didn't recall having any fish with that feature, but going back to the first post in this thread, I see this picture (fourth picture below). Comparing the contours of the color patterns on this fat female and that fish at time of purchase, it's appears that the fat female in this post is the same fish as in that first photograph! If that's true, then her color pattern really did change with growth (no surprise I suppose, but it's cool to observe)... I need to go back and look at the other specimens. And wow, what a difference food makes!

One other thing about her is that beside the rotund belly, which would indicate female, her genital area surrounding the genital papilla is swollen like a balloon (circled in fifth photo below), in the same way that I observed on my Panaqolus species - there's a visible bump of about 4mm diameter and 1mm height around the genital papilla. I haven't checked the males yet, but I doubt they have that swelling.

Also, keep in mind that these woodgrained fish are my small fish. All the woodgrained fish are about the same size. The yellow-bodied fish were as large as 65mm when I purchased them. I don't know if they've grown since, but maybe? Regarding the possibility that the yellow fish are males and these woodgrained fish are all females, I have woodgrained fish that are thin. That in itself doesn't say much, so I'm waiting to see if any yellow fish plump out like this. So far, one or two of the larger yellow fish are slightly rounded more than others, but none so rotund as these little fish. So the sex dimorphism vs two species is not fully settled yet in my mind.

Cheers, Eric

[TalenT]

Interesting thread! I've had several Microglanis sp. through the years. The latest one I had was one of the "woodgrained" ones. I started a thread about it back in 2012:
viewtopic.php?p=253495#p253495

[bekateen]

Interesting thread! I've had several Microglanis sp. through the years. The latest one I had was one of the "woodgrained" ones. I started a thread about it back in 2012:
viewtopic.php?p=253495#p253495

Thanks for sharing! Your fish is a FATTY!

For everyone else's convenience, here's your image link: http://imgur.com/a/WmbW0

As for its ID, I see a large pale break in the subdorsal dark saddle and I see the posterior edge of that saddle projecting backwards. Your fish very looks something like the Caño Guanapalo specimen I showed earlier in this thread (http://repository.humboldt.org.co/bitst ... /37378.JPG). The split subdorsal saddle has some similarity to

Microglanis poecilus

, but from the limited illustrations we have of M. poecilus, the split subdorsal saddle of M. poecilus does not reunite near the pectoral fin, so I don't think yours is that.

In your original post, I see Marc van Arc proposed

Microglanis cottoides

. From a color pattern perspective, that is a much better match to yours than is M. poecilus, but M. cottoides is from coastal southern Brazil. No way that's the same species.

Several other species have a similarly split and angled subdorsal saddle, but again, none of these have the right distribution if your fish came from the most common source in Colombia. Also, a number of these could easily be excluded due to other color pattern features:

Microglanis carlae

Microglanis leniceae

Microglanis leptostriatus

Microglanis maculatus

Microglanis malabarbai

Microglanis reikoae

Microglanis robustus

Microglanis sparsus

Microglanis zonatus

Mees wrote that

Microglanis secundus

looked a lot like M. poecilus, but his drawing of secundus looks like what we currently call

Microglanis iheringi

from Colombia.

P.S., Your pictures are really informative. Please don't let them get lost or if imgur ever closes.

Cheers, Eric

[TalenT]

Thanks for your reply Eric.
Yeah he was a fatty, always first to the food . I traded him in a couple of years ago, at a very trusted LFS.
Feel free to download the photos off imgur if you need them for reference. I have the original photos stored on a HD too, so i guess they are as safe as they can be .

I liked the look of that catfish, he was almost like a "Nano-Cephalosilurus", very cool.

[bekateen]

Ugh. Stare at your fish long enough, and you can convince yourself of anything.

Today I tried to examine the bigger bumblebees, the ones with solid yellow/pink base color. They are thickening up, but none - None! - are fat like the little woodgrained fish. And of the little woodgrained fish, three are huge (like the one pictured above) and the (two which aren't huge) are sort of intermediate colored between the woodgrained females and the yellow fish (darker body than yellow fish - almost an antique bronze, but much lighter than the females and no "wood grain"). That leads me to believe either 1) if these are a different species, then these aren't in condition yet (or their females don't get bulbous, although I doubt that), or 2) they are all one species and the females are smaller, fatter, and darker than the males.

Now I'm leaning more towards the latter. Partly it's because there are no fat yellow fish, but also during the time the fish were in holding containers, one of the fat woodgrained females faded to a yellow color with a few spots. That speaks a lot to me towards them all being one species. So on a whim I combined all the fish into one tank. I'll see if they spawn after being reunited, and if they don't, I'll separate them again.

Also, I noticed that one fish continues to have a subcutaneous lump (parasite, I suspect), even after several rounds of treatment with both Paraguard and PraziPro. Based on its location (see marked photo), I suspect this is the type of parasite that needs a bird for a second host, so I don't think this will spread to the other fish.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Highlight of the day was that I found my missing bumblebee! It must be my smallest specimen and apparently it was able to go up the outflow of my Aqueon HOB filter. I discovered the little guy darting around beneath the filter cartridge. That's really weird because I've checked in there at least twice before, and I didn't see it on any of the previous inspections!

Here's the fish, found it inside my Aqueon HOB filter. In spite of being missing for at least a month, if not two to three months, this fish is certainly not underfed!

[bekateen]

Here is a history of the 18 fish, and a breakdown of the traits I've been looking at to figure out if they're one or two species.

At the very end of the video, I noticed that one or two of the wood-grained fish (although, truly, they were more spotted than wood-grained) females had really washed out in color. That makes me think that they are the females and that the large yellow fish are the males.

Fat small female has faded to a yellow/pink color with sparse spots. Does this confirm they are one species?

I guess until I get genetic testing, for now I'll suspect they may be one species.

Cheers, Eric

My Microglanis aff. iheringi: A 3-Month Update

[Shane]

Really awesome video! If it does turn out that the coloration and size differences are sexual dimorphism identifying Microglanis spp just got a lot more difficult. I know there have been several recent descriptions of Microglanis spp from Brazil. I wonder if any of them mention sexual dimorphism?
-Shane

[bekateen]

Thanks Shane.

I know there have been several recent descriptions of Microglanis spp from Brazil. I wonder if any of them mention sexual dimorphism?
-Shane

I've read those papers, and the only references I recall to sexual dimorphism are girth and a difference in genital papilla shape, with males having a conical g.p., and females having a truncated papilla with a flap on the end. I recall that being

Microglanis berbixae

.

Looking back though, I see this for

Microglanis carlae

: adult males to be about 23 mm SL and females to be about 25 mm SL. That would be the opposite of my fish.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

One behavioral observation I'll make about all of these Microglanis I have: I've united them all in a single 10 gal standard dimension 10 gal tank, with a moderately strong powerhead at one end pointing to the other end, set up as shown below.

During daytime, all of the Microglanis are hiding (duh!), either in small pleco caves (one fish per cave) or crammed 2-4 together inside of open-ended bamboo pipes, or between closely-spaced bamboo pipes. Nearly 100% of the fish are facing the same direction (whether they are in pipes, between pipes, or in caves), and that direction is "facing towards the current" as shown in drawing. What I can't see are the fish hiding among the leaves or under the sponge filter, which I know some are. The few times I've seen those fish, they are more helter-skelter in their arrangement, which makes sense since the water currents are really disrupted around the filter.

As for my efforts to reach out to Venezuelan scientists, I've made contact with Dr. Francisco Provenzano-Rizzi, who used to be in Caracas, Venezuela at the same department as Hector Lopez, but now is in Spain. Coincidentally, Francisco helped describe

Microglanis berbixae

, so hopefully I've met just the right person who might have more knowledge.

Finally, although I know pectoral fin spines are not fully reliable for taxonomy, I've synchronized the captions for all Microglanis species which have pectoral fin spine drawings/pictures. They can be searched collectively as "Pectoral fin spine, dorsal view." Here: https://www.planetcatfish.com/common/ca ... orsal+view.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Good news and bad news today.

Good: Today I received a response from Dr. Provenzano-Rizzi, one of the Venezuelan scientists I contacted.

Bad: He says the rivers are heavily contaminated today, and he doubts any Microglanis would be found there anymore, unless some isolated areas have managed to avoid contamination.

Dr. Provenzano-Rizzi stated it is his belief that the rio Turmero and rio Tuy Microglanis are different from the Colombian specimens which currently are considered M. iheringi. He offered to contact the Caracas museum to see if they have any preserved specimens on file for me, to get photos. Let's hope they do.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Here's another twist in the pants: Over the last couple of months, I've been going systematically through ichthyofauna surveys... okay, not systematically at all... rather, as I can find them... to find photos of Microglanis with catch location information records. This has produced quite a few photos, several reproduced earlier in this thread and two others added to CLOG database as unique CLOG entries. Well here's another new one:

Microglanis sp`rio_las_piedras`

. It was reported as Microglanis aff. iheringi from the Rio Las Piedras, Madre de Dios basin, Peru, by Carvalho et al. (2012) Check List, 8(5): 973-1019. I think this looks like "some" of the Colombian fish we've already seen. But the Madre de Dios is VERY far away from the Orinoco drainage.

MUSM 36948 38 mm SL, Rio Las Piedras, Madre de Dios basin, Peru

IMHO, this Madre de Dios fish bears some similarity to

Microglanis zonatus

(see drawing of M. zonatus below), described from the Rio Morona, Maranon, which isn't close at all to the Madre de Dios.

Microglanis zonatus, from original description

1. The subdorsal dark bar has a pale break in the center, dividing the bar into an anterior (relatively straight) half and a posterior chevron-shaped half.
2. The Y-shaped subadipose dark bar is relatively narrow at its base and the antero-dorsal branch occurs at about the same location.
3. The caudal dark bar also as a Y shape to it, as compared to the H- or X- shaped bars seen in so many other iheringi-like species, making only one point of termination ventrally vs. two points dorsally.
4. In the drawing, the speckling shown in the pale areas of the center and posterior of the body are, I would infer, an artistic attempt to depict what I've described in my fish as heavily spotted or wood-grained color texturing in pale areas of the body, which is plainly visible in the Madre de Dios specimen above.

However, the original description of M. zonatus includes a drawing depicting the tail margin as intact and rounded, not emarginate, bilobed, or forked as in so many other Microglanis. That said, I've never seen a photo of any M. zonatus, and I know that often times the tail fins of wild caught fish are frayed or torn, thus making an accurate description of a tail margin impossible from only one specimen as in the case of M. zonatus. Since so many other Microglanis have emarginate, bilobed or forked tails, is it possible that the original description of M. zonatus is in error to indicate the tail is rounded? For evidence, I suggest we look closely at the pigmentation depicted on the tail: Although the tail is drawn with a rounded margin, the dark pigmentation is bilobed. (I need one of those disbelief memes right now)

Just more fun muddying the waters.

Cheers, Eric

EDIT: This Madre de Dios specimen also resembles a group of beautiful specimens collected by Ian Fuller in the Madre de Dios a couple of years ago. Those fish are illustrated on the Go Wild Peru Facebook page. Gorgeous!

[Shane]

Keep muddying the waters. There is more info on this genus in this thread than the hobby has ever had access to.
-Shane

[bekateen]

Unrelated to my fish, but totally related to my efforts to completely populate all described species of Microglanis with at least one photo or drawing, I've finally tracked down pics of

Microglanis ater

. That's the last described species in need of illustration!

Now I just need to get permission to use the x-ray pics (different ownership than the pics available) which excellently show its pectoral spine serrations and the oddity that M. ater has more rays in the anal fin than other species.

Plus, more local pics of a couple more Microglanis sp. should be coming soon, including what appears to be a documented conspecific of what we called Microglanis sp`rio_pozuzo_ii`; however, now it's renamed

Microglanis sp`rio_ucayali`

due to its more broad distribution.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Today I'm going off topic again, but not really since this thread is about figuring out which Microglanis I have, and to do that I have to figure out which Microglanis exist, where they are, and what they look like. I found myself today coming back to

Microglanis secundus

. It's one of those species described from the northern South American rivers along the Atlantic, but as with

Microglanis poecilus

, it's also been reported in areas further west, even though that's so far afield from its type locality. And it stuns me a but that more than a few writers have stated that M. secundus basically looks like M. poecilus, when in my judgment the drawing of M. secundus from the original description looks nothing like M. poecilus but rather more like what we in the hobby get as

Microglanis iheringi

these days.

Why do I bring this up? Because today I found the only photos I've come upon of M. secundus. The photo is crappy because (a) it's of a preserved old museum specimen and (b) the specimen is not well posed for the photo. But even so, you can see the subdorsal dark bar is like that in the original drawing and it's like that of M. iheringi. It is not split like the dark mark of M. poecilus.

Microglanis secundus museum photo

Microglanis secundus holotype drawing

Microglanis iheringi from Colombia

Seriously, these need someone to troll the type material and generate what I'll call pattern profiles for them. By that I mean narratives of the stereotypical markings from species to species based on the type material.

As a true side-track, I found an article today which is a natural history analysis of

Microglanis garavelloi

. There is some fascinating conclusions in this paper, such as the authors predict a natural lifespan of 3 years and the fish may grow only 10 mm/year. Also, they conclude that breeding is found in 50% of adults 2/3 max SL.

Cheers, Eric

[Shane]

The entry in the Cat-elog for M. secundus in the Catatumbo is a mistake that needs to be fixed. I am sure it is based on a mistaken identification in Galvis et al's peces del Catatumbo. As you can see at a glance, the fish they found is not secundus.

So many "Fishes of" books and papers are riddled with mistaken identifications because the authors simply can not have expertise on every genera they encounter.

Also note that two distinct spp are shown. Is the Microglanis in the Catatumbo the fish in the line drawing or the photo? I can only guess that the line drawing is correct and the photo is simply of a Microglanis they found at an exporter in Bogota. Note the opposite patterns on the paired fins. The drawing shows dark fins with light edges. The photo shows a fish with dark fins that lighten near the body.
-Shane