Mchenga
| Mchenga | ||||||||||||
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Mchenga eucinostomus , drawing from The cichlid fishes of Lake Nyassa by Charles Tate Regan |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Mchenga | ||||||||||||
| Stauffer & Konings , 2006 |
Mchenga is a cichlid - genus from the group of Utaka , the endemic in the East African Malawisee occurs. The six species of the genus originally belonged to Copadichromis and were only transferred to the newly introduced genus Mchenga in2006. The name Mchenga comes from Chichewa , an official language in Malawi alongside English, and means "sand". The name refers to the habitat of the fish that occur in open water above sandy bottoms and also spawn on the sandy bottom.
features
Mchenga species grow to be 8 to 14 cm long and are relatively slender. Characteristic of the genus is the protractile mouth that can be pulled forward and has the shape of a tube and serves to suck in the main food of the fish, planktonic crustaceans. The number of gill rakes on the first ceratobranchiale (longest bone of the gill arch) is relatively low at 10 to 18. Drawing patterns in the form of spots or stripes are not formed. Mchenga differs from Copadichromis in its teeth. Males of Mchenga have small, two-pointed teeth in the outer rows of teeth of the upper and lower jaw, while those of the Copadichromis males are larger and single-pointed.
Way of life
Mchenga species live at depths of 3 to 25 meters above sandy bottoms and feed primarily on planktonic crustaceans. Like almost all cichlids in Lake Malawi, the Mchenga species are mouthbrooders . The males build sand cone nests for spawning.
species
Six species have been described so far:
- Mchenga conophoros (Stauffer, LoVullo & McKaye, 1993)
- Mchenga cyclicos (Stauffer, LoVullo & McKaye, 1993) ( type species )
- Mchenga eucinostomus (Regan, 1922)
- Mchenga flavimanus (Iles, 1960)
- Mchenga inornata (Boulenger, 1908)
- Mchenga thinos (Stauffer, LoVullo & McKaye, 1993)
Two of the species, M. eucinostomus and M. inornata, are known only from their type specimens .
literature
- Jay Richard Stauffer, Ad Konings: Review of Copadichromis (Teleostei: Cichlidae) with the description of a new genus and six new species Ichthyol. Explor. Freshwaters, vol. 17, no. 1, March 2006 © 2006 by Verlag Dr. Friedrich Pfeil, Munich, Germany - ISSN 0936-9902
Web links
- Mchenga on Fishbase.org (English)