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Today I phoned to Horst Linke who has just returned from his May-ecursion to south-east Asia. He visited Kalimantan Tengah, Malaysia (the peninsula), Thailand and Birma. In Kalimantan they visited – among others – parvulus-habitats and were successful. Especially in Malaysia he was depressed by the ever larger amount of forest destruction by palm-oil-plantations “everywhere”. It often needed time and stubbornness to find remnants of blackwaters in small remnants of forest. Near the alfredi-habitats they caught four somewhat strangeParosphromenus, only females however. Maybe, we can give more details later.
Here some details regarding linkei and parvulus.
Horst Linke just reported to me that -among others – he found both species that he searched for. As linkei is concerned he confirmed my supposition that the undescribed spec. Seruyan probably is only a local form of that species (cf. our species account “linkei“). As parvulus is concerned he confirms our rather new knowledge of a very widespread distribution of that species, much more widespread that assumed by the first encounters with it last century. It is still present in a large range of wetlands around Palangkaraya, still in 200 km distance to the town. In the light of that evidence it is questionable if the distinctions of different local forms (like “Babugus” or “Tangkiling” that he and we talked about formerly, cf. our species account “parvulus“) is still to be valid, since the species is present nearly continously. We are not sure about this, however; there are for instance some big rivers separating parts of that region, and it remains to be investigated whether they function as separating the parts or rather as connecting them.
Hi there Peter, the weird looking alfredi females are the ones that have usurped the original alfredi location. These look almost exactly like nagyi. And yes, forest clearing goes on unabated.
On the pictures of this link you can see a male of P. nagyi and allegedly alfredi (in my opinion this are not typical alfredis). They should caught supposedly together. Is that what you mean?
http://www.aquaticquotient.com/forum/showthread.php/70542-Parosphromenus-Alfredi
Possible is that the two species can find together because
1. the distribution area of Parosphromenus nagyi is larger than we definitely know
(not only from Cukai to Rompin, maybe in the deep south until to Kota Tinggi)
2. the alleged Parosphromenus alfredi and the nagyis are not from the typical location where we alfredi know from (Sedili), but from another biotope in the area of Kota TinggiYesterday I heard on the conference of EAC/AKL that the females (possibly of nagyi) were caught in Jemaluang. This village is located about 100km north of the known area of distribution of alfredi (east of Kota Tinggi in Mawai, Desaru and Sedili) and not too far remove from the occur of nagyi (which is quite large).
Christian Hinz
Hi at all!
The three pics in the link christian posted all show P. nagyi! The first pic shows the mating/breeding colour, the others the normal/striped coloration. It’s clearly P. nagyi which can be seen on the typical darc dots in the ventral fins!
Regards, Richard
I am inclined to agree with Richard, but there are other data that make me more cautious in general respect.
In this case, everything from the phenotypic aspect votes for nagyi. Not the dots in the ventrals only (as Richard points out correctly), but the whole ventrals which are very short with much shorter filaments than in alfredi. In fact the ventrals of nagyi are the strikingly shortest in all Licorice Gouramis. And finally it’s the stout appearance of the fish; nagyi are markedly stouter in their bodily shape than alfredi.But although I am fairly sure from these phenotoypic arguments (and in this case related to that locations near Kota Tinggi in Western Malaysia), the newest general informations from the geneticists are really disturbing. Dr. Lukas Rüber (Bern) investigated a series of fish that all was sent as phenotypic linkei, but he found rather different genetic structures. Yes, I can remember that I have seen very different “linkei”: some with sivery body and fins and some with brownish body and fins, some with straight filaments of the ventrals and some with arrowed filaments, and some with many nice red dots around the black side-spots, and other without.
And the same holds for parvulus. We all remember Horst Linkes information of 2009/2010 that this species is the most widely distributed among all licorice gouramis. And there were small phenotypic differences, fish from Babugus looked different form fish from Tangkiling and other places. Now we learn from Lukas that he finds rather big genetic differences between his samples from different places. What does this mean? We don’t know presently.
All we can do at the moment is: wait and be cautious. The whole story of Parosphromenus has not been told already. There are surprises still possible. And that riddle around Kota Tinggi has not been solved, too. For if they are indeed nagyi: How is it possible that they occur there? Have they simply been overlooked formerly? And what happened to the alfredi? Are they still there? For all who love problems this is an exciting situation!
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