Could L201 "big spot" be L471?

[bekateen]

Hi All, I'm thinking out loud here:

I've had a group of L201 big spots for 2 years now, described here: ID help, please. What did I buy - L201, contradens, or other?

When I got them, many of you told me that fish sold as "L201 big spot" are actually considered to be a small morph of

Hypancistrus contradens

, rather than being a large spotted version of

L201

.

I've also been reading up on

L471

. I know in the past it was considered to be a very small type of Hypancistrus. But I've been reading lately that some people who breed these get offspring that grow over 6cm.

I've also read that the way to tell L471 apart from L201 is that L471 has larger spots. If that's true, then couldn't the fish known as L201 big spot be a 6cm sized L471?

I ask because I've had my big spots for 2 years, now, and they've grown only 1cm in length; they grew faster at first, but really slowed down on their growth after that. The largest specimen I have is a male at 67mm SL. The largest female is 64mm SL. And by the way, upon looking at the photos of the L471 in the Cat-eLog (here and here), I see their color spots look a lot like my fishes (pale with a black hue over them), and I see that some of the L471 females look a little bulkier than the males, like miniature contradens ... AND like my big female.

Any thoughts? @Acanthicus? What do you think? Does anyone have any DNA data?

Thanks, Eric

[bekateen]

Bump

[Fundulopanchax76]

What does that bump mean ? lol

[bekateen]

"Bump" is what you write in English for a forum post if nobody has replied to your question in a long time. You write the word "bump" because by posting a new post (in this case, the word "bump"), it pushes (bumps) your post to the top of the "new posts" list, and everyone who reads it knows automatically that you are still waiting for a reply.

[Fundulopanchax76]

Thak you Teacher ! I understood forementioned but just was kidding !

[Acanthicus]

Hi there

I think L 471 is another representative of the species H. contradens, one more local variety.

We published L 471 after we already knew about this smaller phenotype for one and a half year. It was kept and bred in Denmark, while nobody really knew how to call it, since it was smaller than the known Hypancistrus with a similar look. Thats why it was referred to as L280a for a while. After the fishes were spread a little in Denmark, Norway and northern Germany we thought it would be a good time to publish the number to avoid more confusion with the fish spreading around. The intention was to avoid what we know just too good from the wormlined-complex, where no names existed for new phenotypes and totally stupid names were created - causing only more confusion. Others were mixing new phenotypes with known numbers, only to give it a well known name. Remember H. sp. Monte Dourado? It was the first name in trade of L 411, and was mixed with L 260 very often until it got its own number.

Most of the pictures on social platforms that pretend to show mentioned L-Number clearly dont. In fact it seems a new location for beautiful H. contradens was found, one with really big spots. And the past has shown that fish sell better with a number in their name. Thats my guess at least. Pier Aquatics had one of those very early and they showed up in Asia around the same time, and thats when everybody suddenly kept L 471.

The pictures from Frederik in the pcf database show good L 471, they are the parents of the specimens I got from him which I used for the DATZ article.

Coming back to your question: L201 BigSpot is H. contradens, and not L 471, but the latter is H. contradens as well. In my opinion. When L 471 was published none grew bigger than 6cm, but it seems the max size changed.

[bekateen]

I think L 471 is another representative of the species H. contradens, one more local variety...

Coming back to your question: L201 BigSpot is H. contradens, and not L 471, but the latter is H. contradens as well. In my opinion. When L 471 was published none grew bigger than 6cm, but it seems the max size changed.

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

This leads me to an obvious question, which I direct to you and to @Jools: If L471 is considered to be

Hypancistrus contradens

, then why isn't L471 switched from having its own catalog entry to being a "common name" for H. contradens? And of course I'm not just referring here to the PlanetCatfish database, but also for example to other websites like L-welse.com? There are certainly many examples of this with other L numbers. For example,

L204

is

Panaqolus albivermis

. Both PlanetCatfish and L-welse.com do not maintain separate pages for the two names, but unite them together as P. albivermis and list L204 as a common name.

And although L201 big spot has never had its own CLOG entry, we can certainly add it as a "common name" for contradens, so as to properly direct visitors who have bought a fish under that name and want to know what it is. That would avoid future confusion between L201 big spot and actual

L201

, reducing the need to relitigate the question.

And we shouldn't fear combining the entries because we can make textual comments for the contradens entry to the effect of why these other names exist. For example, here on PlanetCatfish, the General Remarks entry for H. contradens could include a comment which reads something like this:

Some populations of H. contradens have been found which do not achieve the maximum SL reported for the species. Many specimens collected and sold under the names "L201 big spot" and L471 appear to have a max SL of about 6-7cm, with some specimens of L471 staying even smaller.

Cheers, Eric

P.S., since L201 big spot doesn't have its own pre-existing CLOG entry, I'm just going to add it as a common name for H. contradens now. No reason to drag that action out.

[Acanthicus]

Hi again

I dont know if it is considered to be H. contradens in general, I do, but cant speak for others.

Between the two examples you are giving is an important difference. P. albivermis was given its number before the scientific description, once described it was clear to “unite“ them, also there doesnt seem to be a local variation in this species. Spotted and striped specimens occur mixed.
H. contradens was described and later an unknown phenotype showed up, worth to be given its own number. Even if I am assuming right and they are morphs of the same species we should not mix them in captivity. So Id leave L 471 its own entry, and mention it might be H. contradens. Thats how I did it on l-welse.com.

[flatfish]

Interesting post. In New Zealand we only have L201 and not a lot of them. However in amongst the imports I managed to get two fish with larger spots (left and right hand fish in the image). One of these has a longer snout. I have been told that the right hand fish looks like an L201 'big spot'. I am also wondering if the name L201 'bigspot' is also used for L201's that have big spots as well H. contradens.

[bekateen]

Thanks again, Daniel.

As for my P. albivermis example, personally I don't see the concern if the species is described before the L number gets issued or vice versa; but that is my own opinion and does not need to drive decision making.

But using that same example, the issue of color pattern variants (striped and spotted) could be addressed in a variety of ways. If it was recognized at the time of species description, of course it should have been included in the range of phenotypic variation found in the paratypes. This would be especially pertinent if the two color morphs co-occur in nature; in that case, they may not be true-breeding if there exist natural heterozygotes. On the other hand, if the spotted morphs are a more recent discovery and if they come from a separate or restricted region, maybe they should be called P. albivermis 'Rio XXXX' (whatever the location is) to distinguish them from the holotypic striped pattern.

Back to the H. contradens group, certainly I'm not advocating lumping the fish together in one aquarium and interbreeding either. I scanned through the Cat-eLog more and I think I found a more relevant example in the Leporacanthicus group. In the Cat-eLog, we list

Leporacanthicus galaxias

(L029), and separately we list

L007

,

L240

,

L241

and

L294

. But rather than simply listing them as L numbers, they've been listed as L. "cf. galaxias" followed by their L numbers (e.g., "Leporacanthicus cf. galaxias(

l007

)"); and in each description page (for all but one of these), there's a description of how they differ from classical L. galaxias. That's really what I was describing above (in my prior post) for L201 big spot and L471, except I didn't have include the "cf." in front of the specific epithet. Would it be helpful to do that? Or would that simply confuse matters more?

If so, we could call L471 "Hypancistrus cf. galaxias (L471)" and likewise for the big spots. That would simply leave L201 in the strictest sense aside...

One more, unrelated (but sort of related) question please: If I understand right, the general consensus of the hobby (if there is one) is that real L201 is not H. contradens. Is that correct? Or is L201 considered a form of H. contradens too, just like L471 and the "L201 big spots?"

Sorry if my line of questioning is a tiresome one. I suppose the lack of clarity in this taxonomy and L numbering system gets under my skin sometimes, even though I fully understand why it exists.

Thanks so much, Eric

[bekateen]

Coming back to your question: L201 BigSpot is H. contradens, and not L 471, but the latter is H. contradens as well. In my opinion. When L 471 was published none grew bigger than 6cm, but it seems the max size changed.

Hi Daniel, For a moment, I'm going to ask you to ignore everything I wrote above about the CLOG entries and focus just on this. As I think more of what you said here, I realize that my original question might not be clear: What I really am trying to understand is this- If L201 big spots are smaller than typical contradens and if L471 are now growing as big similar to L201 "big spot" fish, how do you tell the two categories apart? My L201 big spots are barely growing at around 65mm SL, and as far as I can tell, their color pattern and shape is very similar to the CLOG pics of L471.

Thanks, Eric

[Barbie]

I guess it's time for me to get my camera out and take pictures of my group of these. They're all at least 5 years old. I'll try to work on that this week.

Barbie