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Hello, I’m going to Aquarium Glaser , Rodgau on Thursday this week. I checked their stock list and found P.deisneri on it…
I wondering which species it could be ..?( Somebody knows something about it..?) For sure I will take few fishes.. I will take a pictures also and share with You.Greetings!
We visited Aquarium Glaser near Heidelberg on September 8 and saw just one species. It was labeled deisneri but Martin Hallman, with whom I was traveling, said they were clearly Bintan. If I remember correctly…
Hello Lawrence, thank You for this information. I bought 10 pcs. They are in a very good condition, I will post some pictures later today. Few males are clearly visible, few females also. To be honest, they look like P.bintan indeed .. But I’m not a specialist – Martin is for sure ..:)
Best regards!they look nice. hopefully you can get Hallmann or Peter Beyer or Peter Finke to look and assess identity. I am not qualified.
For me, P. bintan is one of the riddles of the genus. It was described at a time where we were far of the knowledge of the many local forms that are more or less similar, quite a few of them native to Sumatra that was hardly well-known at that time. This holds for Maurice Kottelat, too. in the two decades since we came across many bintan-like forms. Take Belitung, an island near Bangka on which Horst Linke found P. spec. Belitung. The problem is at least as much a problem of theoretical biology than as much a problem of empirical knowledge of localities. It is mirrored by the fact that Kottelat is silent on Parosphromenus since his last description of five new species in 2005. They were rather clearly separable by structural criteria, not by mere colour. Since then description has become difficult: You hit the border of the traditional methods that ignore genetic means. But all we have learned since then by genetic analysis is that the many different but similar forms are extremely near to each other. Since then bintan has become a catch-all-species, and as aquarist-specialists we react by speaking of bintan-like fish.
Clearly, these fish to be seen here are bintan-like. If you take only the well-described species they are bintan, no doubt. The association “P. deissneri” is clearly wrong, for that species can be distinguished by clear structural criteria. Without any reliable information on their location there is no other determination possible. But a question remains: Are all those bintan-like forms bintan or not? Is blue-line bintan? Is Sentang bintan? Is Belitung bintan? And that reduces to the question: Is the description of bintan sufficient and final even in 2016?
My position is the following: Parosphromenus is so interesting a genus since we come across fish that are highly diversified locally. Why? Because the species are still developing, on the basis of local segregation. Presently, we encounter a still-photo of a highly dynamic evolution, the evolution of different species from a common mother-species, but in many cases the process has not come to an end so far. This is the reason why Kottelat is silent. What with his traditional taxonomic methods and in the light of the genetic similarity should he do otherwise?
Conclusion: The Glaser fish is not deissneri, but a bintan-like form. Whether it is bintan, is not a question of exactly looking at these fish but a question of the species-concept we use in the case of the dynamics of presently ongoing evolution. My tendency is to use it in rather restrictive a way, say: all are bintan, because for developing species I prefer to be a lumper. And that means we have to reformulate – at least to supplement – that decription of bintan in the light of the many new forms. But my impression is that many people, even taxonomists, and especially aquarists (even notorious discoverers as Horst Linke) prefer to be splitters; they tend to take developing species to be (hitherto undescribed) species already.
I don’t think we could say more at present. For a more detailed analysis we need better photos (lighter!); then we could possibly make some suggestions on the locality the fish might come from. But that’s all. We could not say whether they are bintan or only bintan-like. Since that’s a question of how to deal with ongoing evolution in the taxonomic business.Thank You for your reply Lawrence, Bill and Peter. I remember what it was at the beginning of my paros adventure – I wanted to know which exactly species I have and that knowledge become more important than questions How to keep my paros succesfull ..
Now , my question about the species is less important – every single species or color form of genus Parosphromenus is beautifull and exactly same important as the others… During almost 5 years of my experience I saw the species which were available in big quantities ( those days I thought – the are less desirable by me – I wanted to have realy rare species ..) but after some time ( year-two) the same species gone from the trade and I didn’t saw them again …( P. anjunganensis for eg.).Important thing is to keep them healthy, breed them and spread the fry between Polish paro keepers..:)
Good BRIGHTER pictures of mating males will also be done 🙂Best regards !
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