[Peter Finke]

Greg, please understand that I cannot reply to your many questions in detail here. But I shall try to do so in a more general way.
1. The genetic investigations were initiated by a group of young ichthyologists from the Natural History Museum in London and by myself and some others. I have contacted Dr. Steinke who first worked in Germany before he went to Guelph in Canada in order to work for the Fish-BOL-project. They investigate in sea-fish in the first line, but Steinke was interested privately in our question and he did that without any costs beside his official duties. The same happens now in Bern with Dr. Rüber, one of the London team, who has returned to his home Switzerland. He has taken over now from Steinke. All this is without any costs for us.
2. On description: There is nobody officially deciding what should be described or who should do that. In principle every person could do it when he thinks he is able to. But the thing is not easy. We have some descriptions that therefore have remained rather preliminary (harveyi, nagyi …). But they are valid nevertheless. In the last cases the thing was done mainly by Maurice Kottelat, a good expert on south-east Asian fish. But now there seems to be a delay of further descriptions. One can presume for what reasons … And the describer decides on the name. Once the name is given and the descriptions is published, it is final.
A description is official when the name is given and when it is published. There are many things that should be included in such descriptions, but if they miss, the thing is valid nevertheless. That’s a big problem. There is no official “check” or control. But from time to time a scientist who is interested in that genus and thinks to have found some faults or deficiencies decides personally to try a revision of that genus. But it is entirely a matter of personal decision and faculty.
3. Are the fish in captivity regularly compared to wild representatives of their species to notice any possible genetical or phenotypical changes in either population? No, not at all. But the best experts of a genus (and we have all in our project) try to do that as often they have the possibility for it. But that could not be done systematically. Only if they come across some “strange” deviant fish … In our Parosphromenus-project we have some very good experts on our genus who can tell you of many variants and of many questions and problems of the official descriptions.
4. So there is certainly a great need for a revision sometime in the future. And the inclusion of genetic methods will play a big role in that for the hitherto decriptions are restricted to the phenotypes only. Mostly on dead museum-matarial. Even behaviour is nearly not discussed at all… So, for instance, displaying males with head-down and displaying males with head-up are not taken to indicate an important feature for the description. This will surely be an important point in a future revision of Parosphromenus.