The
PAROSPHROMENUS PROJECT

The
PAROSPHROMENUS
PROJECT

New paros at my home

#5533
Peter Finke
Participant

Bartian is probably right and I am wrong. The reason is – not for the first time – bad photographs. We are often asked to tell what species it is by giving really bad photos which do not show the necessary details. The main characteristics of P. pahuensis are (in both sexes!) the many whitish or silvery spots on the unpaired fins which resemble those of linkei. But rarely both sexes are seen in such different a fin-colour between male and female as in these fish. In this species it is often rather difficult to distinguish males and females. Mostly, of course, the males are more intensely coloured, but I have rarely seen pahuensis such greatly different than here.

The explanation is obviously that the animals are still rather young ones. And they are presented to us not in the typical dress but with very marked stripes on the bodies. In this mood the marked blotches tend to be hidden by the stripes (or the other way around in other species: there seem to be such blotches but they disappear when the stripes disappear, take some bintan-forms; intermediate is paludicola that sometimes (in some local forms) show marked blotches (as in the scientific description) and often do not).

But Bartian has rightly pointed out that the body shape is different than that of most anjunganensis. It appeared a bit strange to me, I admit, but I have seen divergent body shapes of many species already. Nevertheless I think that we should prefer to use photographs of typically coloured and developed animals because many of the users of this site are beginners who are easily confused by half-grown and not fully coloured animals.

I should be interested to see better photos of these animals, because now I want to know whether these strong differences in fin colouration between the sexes are always to be seen or only in exceptional situations. And I want to see whether the typicial spotted appearance of the unpaired fins in both sexes (!) is not yet to be seen at all (because they are still too young) or not.