Red Ecuadorian cichlid

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Red Ecuadorian cichlid
Red Ecuadorian cichlid (Mesoheros festae), male

Red Ecuadorian cichlid ( Mesoheros festae ), male

Systematics
Order : Cichliformes
Family : Cichlids (Cichlidae)
Subfamily : Cichlinae
Tribe : Heroini
Genre : Mesoheros
Type : Red Ecuadorian cichlid
Scientific name
Mesoheros festae
( Boulenger , 1899)

The red Ecuadorian cichlid ( Mesoheros festae , syn .: Cichlasoma festae ) is a freshwater fish from the family of cichlids , which occurs in northwestern South America in rivers that flow into the Pacific . The distribution area near the coast lies between the rivers Río Esmeraldas in northern Ecuador and Río Tumbes in the extreme northwest of Peru.

features

The red Ecuadorian cichlid is one of the larger cichlids and can reach a length of over 30 cm. Its body is oval and laterally flattened, its head tapering towards the end mouth. Characteristic features of the species are seven black horizontal stripes on the sides of the body, two further horizontal stripes on the back of the head and a blue-green bordered, black eye spot in the upper area of ​​the tail stalk. The sexes are easy to distinguish. Males have a green-yellow basic color and numerous blue-green, shiny spots on the back of the body. The stripe pattern can hardly be visible on them. Females are colored intensely red or orange-red with high-contrast black horizontal stripes. During the breeding season, their pelvic fins and the anterior rayed section of the dorsal fin are black.

Way of life

The red Ecuadorian cichlid lives in small to larger rivers and feeds mainly on bottom-dwelling invertebrates.

Systematics

The cichlid was in 1899 by the Belgian-British zoologist George Albert Boulenger as Heros festae described . The type locality is the lower Río Guayas near Guayaquil . Later the species was assigned to the genera Nandopsis and Parapetenia ( synonym of Nandopsis ), most recently Cichlasoma . During a revision of Cichlasoma by the Swedish ichthyologist Sven O. Kullander , however, the species was separated from Cichlasoma . Since no new generic name is available for this species and a number of other cichlids that originally belonged to Cichlasoma , the generic name "Cichlasoma" was used in quotation marks for a while. This changed in August 2015 when a team of ichthyologists introduced the genus Mesoheros for three ostandine species .

literature

  • Horst Linke, Wolfgang Staek: American cichlids II, large cichlids. Tetra-Verlag, Bissendorf 1997, ISBN 3-8974-5101-8 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sven O. Kullander: Revision of the South American cichlid genus Cichlasoma. Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm 1983.
  2. ↑ 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. In: Zootaxa. 3999 (2), doi: 10.11646 / zootaxa.3999.2.3 , pp. 211-234.

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