All Bichir (Polypterus) Species - Updated
- Thread starter Josh's Fish
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While this post is active again, I just want to clarify, this is dated.
P. senegalus meridionales is not valid, only P. senegalus. The Meridionales specimen is an ordinary Senegalus from the Lualaba River.
P. bichir lapradei and P. bichir bichir are both just P. bichir. Lapradei is an ecotype, not subspecies (a lower classification to subspecies). There's many reasons for this, one of which is subspecies are typically regionally isolated types, but Lapradei exist in the same regions as other P. bichir and sometimes the same water bodies too.
P. endlicheri is P. endlicherii
P. palmas palmas and P. palmas buettikoferi are both P. palmas. Buettikoferi is just a marking difference of P. palmas (which even occurs in siblings). Turns out it was never truly valid as a subspecies anyway due to Steindancher never having followed up with a description from his brief notes.
These are just a few things corrected/updated from this thread. Currently, extant Polypterus taxonomy is starting to settle. Working with comparative biologists, we've kept the most up to date information in The Bichir Handbook which has undergone peer review. You can order a copy from www.thebichirhandbook.com
P. senegalus meridionales is not valid, only P. senegalus. The Meridionales specimen is an ordinary Senegalus from the Lualaba River.
P. bichir lapradei and P. bichir bichir are both just P. bichir. Lapradei is an ecotype, not subspecies (a lower classification to subspecies). There's many reasons for this, one of which is subspecies are typically regionally isolated types, but Lapradei exist in the same regions as other P. bichir and sometimes the same water bodies too.
P. endlicheri is P. endlicherii
P. palmas palmas and P. palmas buettikoferi are both P. palmas. Buettikoferi is just a marking difference of P. palmas (which even occurs in siblings). Turns out it was never truly valid as a subspecies anyway due to Steindancher never having followed up with a description from his brief notes.
These are just a few things corrected/updated from this thread. Currently, extant Polypterus taxonomy is starting to settle. Working with comparative biologists, we've kept the most up to date information in The Bichir Handbook which has undergone peer review. You can order a copy from www.thebichirhandbook.com
Lately I have been trying to learn more about polypterus.
Only one more week and I will hopefully hold the bichir handbook in my hands.
Would you mind to go more into detail with the last point on P. bichir vs lapradei?
How does existing in the same water bodies supports that it is an ecotype?
Are P. bichir and the former lapradai able to meet in the wild?
Or are they sepperated by natural barriers like for example rapids within the same waterbody?
I wouldn't say it's P. bichir vs Lapradei as they are the same fish, just with minor differences in their shared lakes/river systems.
Existing in the same water body doesn't support it being an ecotype, that is just one of the arguments that it is not a subspecies. The subspecies were disbanded by Mortiz, Britz 2019.
P. bichir constitues many ecotypes, some of which we associate with the name 'Lapradei'. These ecotypes can live together in the same water bodies, but usually in different depths, areas, flows etc. fitting in different niches, with the opportunity to even breed with each other. They have slight variations in appearance, often with some overlap too. All the 'Lapradei' types are, are just ecotypical variants of P. bichir. Many prevelant fishes have their own (mostly nameless) ecotypes, the only reason why the Lapradei ecotypes are notable, is because they were described as a subspecies before, so the name is well established in the trade.
In short, the species P. bichir has many different variations, and some of them we call Lapradei.
Hope this helps!
Thanks. This helps. Especially the hint with the recent revision by Moritz and Britz was helpful. It just took me a while to find it. Most of the search results in google lead to your facebook or MFK.
Now I understand why the colour pattern and pigmentation is not enough to make "lapradei" a valid species in this case. There is simply too much variability and overlap to make a clear separation between the different P. bichir populations.
I just wish they would have said more about the different head shape mentioned by Steindachner.
Now I understand why the colour pattern and pigmentation is not enough to make "lapradei" a valid species in this case. There is simply too much variability and overlap to make a clear separation between the different P. bichir populations.
I just wish they would have said more about the different head shape mentioned by Steindachner.
Even a subspecies is still the same species, when Lapradei was a subspecies. P. bichir lapradei and P. bichir bichir were still just the species P. bichir. Nothing much has changed now, apart from we don't use their trinomal name in science as only the binomal name is valid. There would have to be a more significant difference for them to be a species of their own, and markings wouldn't really influence that anyway, as fishes are usually described from dead specimens which have washed out markings. All of their wild differences can be explained by variability in a population and their environment.
Physical morphology and meristics are among some of the best ways to describe fishes. Markings bare little influence (aside from aquarists identifying ecotypes). I've also had conversations with Dr. Timo Mortiz who explained that mtDNA is useful for species identification, but is no longer state of the art to use it for phylogentic relationships. I remember a lot of aquarists rejected their revision at first, as they didn't primarily use mtDNA like older studies have done, but this was one of the reasons. Quite a lot of studies were also incomplete, dated, inaccurate (with lesser known revisions), and with many misidentifications. Their revision (which took 10 years) filtered through all this work, making other ichthyologists aware what is the current knowledge of Polypteridae, as the state of it before was very unreliable, with some taxa not even valid, but was used as such.
Diverged a little bit there haha, but hopefully something useful in there
I know haha, must have been a typo ?
Have been emailing Timo all month, he's just done a review of the book in the Journal of Fish Biology
