Mesoheros
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The red Ecuadorian cichlid ( Mesoheros festae ), type species of the genus |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Mesoheros | ||||||||||||
| McMahan & Chakrabarty , 2015 |
Mesoheros ( Sp .: "Meso" = middle + Heros ) is a genus of cichlids (Cichlidae)occurring in northwestern South America west of the Andes. The distribution area extends from the Río Tumbes in the north of Peru over the Río Esmeraldas in western Ecuador, the Río Patía in southwest Colombia to the rivers Río Atrato , Río Baudó and Río San Juan in northwestern Colombia.
features
Mesoheros species reach lengths of 25 to over 30 cm and have a typical beefy cichlid shape with an oval, somewhat elongated body. The mouth is relatively small and does not extend to the outer limits of the eye sockets. On the sides of the body there are seven, rarely six, dark spots, which in the Mesoheros festae type can also be formed as vertical bands. The caudal fin is straight or rounded. A clearly visible black spot is on the upper part of the caudal peduncle, above the end of the second lateral line . The dorsal, anal and caudal fins are spotted, the bases of the dorsal and anal fin are scaly.
species
There are four types described:
- Mesoheros atromaculatum Regan , 1912
- Red Ecuadorian cichlid ( Mesoheros festae ( Boulenger , 1899)) (type species)
- Mesoheros gephyrus ( Eigenmann , 1922)
- Mesoheros ornatus ( Regan , 1905)
Systematics
All four species originally belonged to the then collective genus Cichlasoma . For a long time it has been clear that the four species are not particularly closely related to the core group of Cichlasoma around the type species Cichlasoma bimaculatum . They were therefore separated as the “Cichlasoma” festae group, but the generic name continued to be used in quotation marks, as no new one was available. This changed in August 2015 when a team of ichthyologists introduced the genus Mesoheros for the four species . Mesoheros does not belong to the tribe Cichlasomatini , like Cichlasoma , but to the tribe Heroini and there to a clade of cichlids called Herichthyines (after Herichthys ), which are mainly found in northern Central America.
literature
- Caleb D. McMahan, Wilfredo A. Matamoros, Kyle R. Piller & Prosanta Chakrabarty: Taxonomy and systematics of the herichthyins (Cichlidae: Tribe Heroini), with the description of eight new Middle American Genera. Zootaxa 3999 (2): 211-234. doi: 10.11646 / zootaxa.3999.2.3