[David Jones]

Yes, Peter, you are right – they could be something else altogether – another option I omitted from my recent comment. Thank your for adding that option here. Looking at the colors of the fish, especially the male in flaring/breeding coloration, they do not look to be quite “classic” tweediei, as far as I can tell, based on Lawrence Kent’s photo on the website of fully sparring males of known tweediei. And they could be from somewhere else besides Malaysia, no doubt. However, as you say, this does not prevent us from making the effort to see where the fish might possibly fit into the known taxonomic system, given it’s less that final descriptions, based on what we do known and can be observed, as in the Mimbon ’98 case. If the fish could be referred to with some kind of biological or taxonomic name, I would prefer that, and at first was not happy naming a fish after an importer and year, but now see the necessity of it, given the lack of collecting locale and other deciding factors – I am accepting, as you have pointed out, that they may have to be referred to as “P. spec. TCE 2015” ad infinitum – I reread, some days ago, your explanations I referred to of the biological naming situation, and I was reminded of the limitations there, and it enabled me to let go of my want to call them some tweedie/phoenicurus/opallios to so great an extent. Yet I admit it is one fundamental characteristic of humans to want to name and categorize the phenomena we perceive, and a necessity, so that we can talk about things with some kind of common understanding. Surely this is the whole point of the Linnean binomial naming system, adopted by the scientific community. That that system, developed in it’s own time and milieu, is now seen to be incomplete or in need of augmentation is certainly no surprise, as you have shown, given the nature of the ongoing revision, or even complete discarding, of whole scientific theories and paradigms as human understanding and consciousness shifts. From a more philosophic viewpoint – your’s and other’s perspectives and comments, this discussion and the nature of biology in general reminds us of the benefits and limitations of that naming system and our human tendency to categorize, and perhaps, invites us to see something underlying or beyond the forms we seek to name. As you and others often refer to, Beauty, for instance.