Saramaccensis or other brevisrostris type?

[francoisMtl]

Hi,
10 months ago, visiting some LFS, I did what I usually not do, to buy some unknown cory. They were the very last three from a

Corydoras melanistius

tank. What I found intriguing was a long snout (all my corys had short rounded snout at that time so getting a cory with a long one, just for a change), no obvious black on dorsal fin (the black spot is more below the dorsal fin spreading on the body), some paterning on caudale. Looking at Cat-eLog, I found

Corydoras saramaccensis

which may be a good possible name for those guys, plus they share at least one river localisation. They do not seem to match with

Corydoras melanistius

,

Corydoras brevirostris

, or

Corydoras delphax

.
One thing that puzzle me, is one has finer point on the body compare to the two other.
Here are some pictures:

What would be great if they are male and female from same species so, there will be a small chance to multiply this cory and get a more decent number.
Any help would be great to know if they are all three the same species and which one.
Thanks,
Francois

[Karsten S.]

Hi Francois,

C. saramaccensis belongs to acutus group (lineage 1), your cory is long snouted cory (lineage 8 as per Alexandrou et al.). Additionally C. saramaccensis is extremly rare and only be found in Saramacca river system in Suriname and there are nearly no exports from this country. I don't know of any export of this species.

C. brevirostris and C. melanistius can also be excluded (wrong lineage).
I would call your corys C. delphax, I don't see any reason why they should not belong to this species.
However, this colour pattern is quite common in both lineages (8 & 9), there are many similar species/forms.
Do you have any idea of their origin ?

Cheers,

[francoisMtl]

Hi Karsten,

I do not have any information of their origin, they were the last three from a tank of C.melanistius from a chain store in Toronto... I always try to avoid cory with such coloration as it looks complicated to sort out species and they are often mixed and or misslabeled, but this time with the longer snout I thought it could be easier to identify. Based on the nose shape I would exclude lineage 9 (but I may be wrong as I did not c look at eahc cory from this lineage to see their nose).

I can not find C.saramaccensis in Alexendrou's Nature paper. If C.saramaccensis is indeed from lineage 1, the fish in my tank have shorter snout as compare to the ones from lineage 1, and would be more comparable to the intermediate long snout from lineage 8. Also they may have some dark marking on the first few ray from dorsal fin. It tends to fade away rapidely when I manipulate them for a picture, but inside the tank it looks like if they have some dark.
All the above plus the fact you mention, that there are almost no export from Saramacca river, makes C.delphax a more likely identification.

Thanks a lot for your help in this identification.
Francois

[Karsten S.]

Hello Francois,

you're welcome.
Here you can find an overview of all the corys belonging to the different lineages. It should always appear as the first entries only for the genus Aspidoras and Scleromystax you will have to browse up to Callichthyidae and then down again...
The text is in German, but pics are more interesting anyway...

There is another paper from Alexandrou & Taylor (2011), in which all corys known at that time including C and CW numbers have been assigned to the lineages. I followed their proposal and only in exceptional cases corrected their results.

Cheers,