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Hello everyone,
As some of you know, I am currently writing my A-Grade paper on parosphromenus and the paroproject.
One of my goals is to analyse the developpment of the stock and the census results. Here, I give you the dropbox-link to the list I produced: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sv02e4mw2sactmb/Censi%202010-2015%20Kopie.xlsx?dl=0You can find the following information:
On the top, you see the year and below the amount of “BREEDING PAIRS” (=ZP) for each species/form that has ever been reported. I alays looked at the number of adult animals and took the lower number (if report was 5male, 3female, I counted this as 3 Breeding Pairs) So if of one species/form there had only been 50 females reported, I did not count them nor did I count undeterminde or juvenile animals.
I decided to do it that way because it does not make sense to count animals that are either not able to reproduce or not fully grown. I wanted to get a comarable number that has a sort of an impact. Theoretically, with each of these pairs we could set up a tank that should be able to produce offspring. This means that breading pair has the potential to keep its species alife which is not given in single animals or monosex groups.
I tried to keep as close to the descriptions and differenciations of forms given in the census reports. The “ct” at the end of a species name indicates “commertial trade or commertial import”.
At the bottom end of the file, you find special and concluded information for each year. The “total ZP” indicates the total amount of breeding pairs reported per year. The second row is the amount of Species/forms that were reported. The next and probably pretty important number is the ratio (total pairs)/(species reportet) It gives the average number of breeding pairs per species that were present. The last (uncomplete) row shows the number of participants.
The coloration of the numbers in the table indicates the “safety” of a present “population”. I would consider anything below 6(red) breeding pairs of one form/species als rather endangered. If there are more than 20 pairs(dark green), we can be pretty sure that the species can be kept alife for quite some time. It should be rather unexpectable that these species will vanish within a short time.
I hope this makes our whole project a bit more visible. The idea is that as soon as possible, most of the bars on the far right are dark green…
I know that the whole diagram is not necessarily representative but maybe it shows that we can definitely achieve something. we managed to keep the whole number of breeding pairs more than twice as high as it was when the censi started. The number of species has also increased and quite a few are on their way “out of the red”.
Please feel free to discuss on my results, give inputs for improvement or criticise…
Here i have an updated version now including the 2011 fall census wich i could not access before https://www.dropbox.com/s/sv02e4mw2sactmb/Censi%202010-2015%20Kopie.xlsx?dl=0
Thank you, RafEg, It is really interesting, and you are right it does give a good overview of the development and its easy to use.
And as you say it there are very interesting improvements, – also in the number of participants from the first years.I did spot one mistake actually, which is really either mine or Bennies, not yours – I dont know if you can correct it, – if not its just to be remembered and I have written to Bennie.
The linkei I reported in 2015 have been listed under p.linkei (sukamara) and they should have been under p.cf.linkei.
I noticed since p.cf.linkei seems to have gone in 2015 and in fact I have a lot swimming in my tanks. Its just a formal little mistake, – we will correct it later.“I decided to do it that way because it does not make sense to count animals that are either not able to reproduce or not fully grown. I wanted to get a comarable number that has a sort of an impact. Theoretically, with each of these pairs we could set up a tank that should be able to produce offspring. This means that breading pair has the potential to keep its species alife which is not given in single animals or monosex groups.”
Rafael, this is no good a decision. It is very important that even single fish are noted, because these species are rare and heavily endangered . We often had the case that a single male or a single female could help another person who looked for just the partner. In the case of rare fish species we must think in other categories than that we are accustomed to with most barbs or cichlids. A single fish might be of utmost importance and often was!
It’s for me the same, think Peter is right to also count the non pair’s. It shure give then the uppertunity for others to trade or buy.
For instant: I do have only one female and three males. Shure also one is the dominant, he’s the biggest and the most colored although another male is not scared of him.
Think counting all the fish is a good idea.Hello Everybody,
I would like to explain my thoughts and reasons why I decided to count the way I did. Some of you may have heard this during the meeting in Hamburg to a certain extent but I want to point it out here more clearly:
The background of this census-overview I produced and you all can access through the dropbox-link abve was to have raw numbers to get a reasonable idea of the success of the PP. As you might know, I am writing an A-Grade paper on the PP, its origin and especially its success. I want to show wether the PP is able to survive and grow until its goals are reached and what these goals are or should be.
When I came across the census I was pleased to have such data because the census is actually the only source we have on the active member developpment and developpments in stock. I soon realized the biggest problems of the census:
1. There is no easily readable overview on the “over-the-years-developpment”, one would have to open some 10 .pdf-files for a overview.
2. The only comments on the census results can be found in a second .pdf in which whoever collects the data gives a comparision of the presently reported stock as opposed to the last reported stock. There is no long-term survey. It is not possible because of problem 1.
I wanted to make the whole of this eccellent data-set more accessible for the “simple member”. Noone wants to spend hours looking for the developpment of one single species.
Then, at the Hambnurg-meeting, we came across the strange eveloppment in P. cf. filamentosus spec. “Ampah”. In this specific case, some dozens of paors had been imported 2013. These then have been spread to several members of the PP. In april 2013, some 16 pairs had been reported. As we can see in my graph, this number has gone down over the years with a constant speed, but noone reacted to that devloppment, probably because noone saw it. This finally led to a minimum of only 1 reported pair in fall 2014. Everyone at the meeting asked themselves how this could happen. We had a good stock and now it has gone. This is something we can see in further species too for example with P. cf. nagyi “Cherating” or P. tweediei “Pekan Nenas”. In both species we had a relatively safe stock some years ago and now they have gotten close to vanish or we have lost high percentages of the origina stock.
This has to be stopped and by the use of my table, we now have a possibility to track such developpments and react to them. I suggested some kind of a prewarning system. If we find significant decrease in a certain species, we should write to the people who still have a few pairs so that they should focus on these rare species more in the future time so that we can keep them in stock. I am not quite sure what number of pairs we should define as the lower minimum from when on this prewarning system should start. I would suggest a minmum of 7 pairs. If you agree with me in that point, I could overtake the part of announcing these “endangered stocks” on the forum as I will carry on with the table anyways.
And there we go: The reason why I count pairs instead of single animals should now be obvious. Any single animal is not able to reproduce neither is a unisex group. But if we see some species that is in high danger of disappearing, such unisex stocks might be brought together to increase the number of breeding pairs.
I like to think of my table as some kind of population evaluation. As some of you with a biologist background might know, populations in nature are counted and calculated through different factors and one of these is the sex ratio. A population is only as big as its breeding potential is and this is highly influenced by the sex ratio.I suggest that we look at the two different data-collection-ways like that. The census is important to find such unequal sex ratio and track every single animal. This should also make sure that unequalities can be reacted on through regular anlimal exchange. My table on the other hand is to clarify and track the overall developpment and ensure higher probability of keeping species high in stock and react on significant losses.
This is the dropbox-link, again:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sv02e4mw2sactmb/Censi%202010-2015%20Kopie.xlsx?dl=0
Thank for your thorough explaination, now I do understand a little more. It’s also more to see how many people have how many pair’s Wich are more dangerous than the other. Or to see what is happening with what kind of pair’s over the years. It’s rather sorry than that you can’t make that overall view from the years, maybe it’s possible if you make for every year your own statistics,(own made report) but that will give more work 🙁
It’s great you even started this and it’s still there, survived the time.
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