Stocking
Classification of Tropheus. What Do the Names Mean?
Written by Sunday, 21 September 2008 21:58
It is rather confusing when someone encounters a “descriptive” name like Tropheus sp. "Mpimbwe" (Korongwe Bay)F0 or Tropheus brichardi (Malagarasi) F1 for the first time. This could cause some hesitation even to experienced hobbyists who have kept fish for some years already. What does this mixture of names, abbreviations, letters and numbers means? When you grasp the main principle behind the naming of Tropheus it becomes clear that things are quite simple.
Let’s start from the leftmost part which is the most well known – Tropheus. The scientific (Latin) names of all the species consist of tow parts – the name of the genus and the name of the species. All the Tropheus are members of Tropheus genus and the first word indicates this.
The second word indicates the species. Few years ago there were only four species of Tropheus genus officially recognized by the scientists:
- Tropheus annectens
- Tropheus brichardi
- Tropheus duboisi
- Tropheus moori
Unfortunately for the scientists, though fortunately for the hobbyists, Tropheus are so diverse and have so many variants that four species are just not enough to describe all this variety. Accordingly two of these four species have been divided to allow for a more accurate description of the fish classified therein.
From Tropheus moori were “born” Tropheus sp. Black, Tropheus sp. Red and Tropheus sp. Ikola, while Tropheus brichardi gave birth to Tropheus sp. Mpimbwe. There are some arguments about whether sp. Ikola should be separate from sp. Black and if sp. Mpimbwe is needed at all but in order keep things as simple as possible I will not discuss these arguments here. Some scientists insist on placing one more moori - variant polli) in a species of it’s own but I will skip this for now because there the information available is not sufficient to justify this variant becoming a separate species. For the moment we can stick to 8 species:
- Tropheus annectens
- Tropheus brichardi
- Tropheus duboisi
- Tropheus moori
- Tropheus sp. Black
- Tropheus sp. Red
- Tropheus sp. Ikola
- Tropheus sp. Mpimbwe
Probably you’ve noticed the abbreviation sp. in front of the names of the four new species. It’s presence there is quite simple to explain – it comes from species and means that the name of the species is not yet officially acknowledged by the scientists. While they argue about this we can quietly use Tropheus sp. Black and all the others.
It is important not to forget the close relation between sp. Black, sp. Red, sp. Ikola on one side and moori on the other – we use “moori complex” to describe them all together.
For most of the species the name consisting of genus and species is enough but Tropheus are so diverse and have so many geo-morphs that it is not possible to tell them apart using just the species name. That’s why a third word is needed. Normally it is written in brackets and means the exact geographic location where this morph was collected.
Sometimes you can see the letters OB at the end of the names. It is an acronym for orange blotch. If you’ve kept Malawi cichlids you should be well aware of that but probably some of you don’t know that there are some OB morphs in the Tropheus genus as well.
You will probably already know what the name of a Tropheus means. There is one more thing I would like to discuss and this is not really part of the name of a species . More often than not you will notice, after the names of the genus and a species, the letter F followed by a number (normally 0,1 or 2). This refers to the number of generations which separates the fish being described from it’s wild ancestors. F0 stands for wild caught fish, F1 – fist generation (the offspring of F0) and so on. It is believed that F1 is one of the best choices for keeping in aquarium because sometimes wild fish have difficulties adapting in a tank environment – they have shorter life spans and higher stress related death rates. There is another type of fish that are often described as F0 but are not actually caught in the lake. They are raised in ponds around Tanganyika and are a little cheaper than their wild relatives.
The list of geographic locations around the lake Tanganyika where fish are collected is still increasing. The number of Tropheus variants is rising as well – a new variant is found almost every month. As with all articles presenting taxonomy, this will also soon be dated – some of the “temporary” species will get their scientific names, others will split again but this is not too important. I can tell you for sure that the main principle of naming Tropheus will not change soon.
I will conclude by giving an example of how we are to understand the name of a species. I have chosen, for this example, the name of one of my favorite Tropheus variants, Tropheus sp. Black (Siyeswe Bay) F1. This means a fish belonging to the Tropheus genus, moori complex, species Black (still not officially named), which was collected from the Siyeswe Bay area and is one generation away from its wild ancestors.
The names are important but the most important thing is to have great fun keeping Tropheus!
Enter Tropheus sp. Black Gallery.
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