PlanetCatfish.com

Saw a poster on the molecular phylogeny of the Callichthyidae at the Manaus meeting today that suggested that some <i>Corydoras</i> were more closely related to <i>Aspidoras</i> and others to <i>Brochis</i>, thus making <i>Brochis</i> and <i>Aspidoras</i> non-monophyletic.
Of course, one can always scream "the molecules lie!"

Hi!

Well it is not much of a surprise, when you look at the genus Corydoras itself...how can all these species be all the same genus...
Ian said that a major revision is under way...
Cheers
Yann

Perhaps we may now see a chink of light in that dark tunnel that is cory taxonomy! It was always hinted at that the divisions between these very similar genera were tenuous at best. Strauss (1985) came to the conclusion that the morphometrics that were used to define many cory species were meaningless, therefore a lot of so-called species were not properly defined at all.

Molecules do not lie, one needs to understand what they are trying to say to you.

There is a great need for clarification of many of the so called groups within Corydoradinae With the work that is now being undetaken by the 'All Catfish Species Project' it is hoped that many of the Generic and Species problems will be solved. There are no short term answers but as information becomes available from the project it will be published here, on my own site and in the CSG magazine 'CatChat'.

I am working on a new Cory ID book that will deal with group on a purely species level, which will include Aspidoras, Brochis, Corydoras and full comprehensive coverage of all the current 'C' numbers, all 110 or may be even more of them.

Ian