Parosphromenus-Newsletter No. 103 
Bielefeld (Germany), October 10th, 2012
Dear all, here are the next addresses that have been listed recently in our database, a reminder at the running new census, a note on a remarkable movie with a caring female, and some other things:
1. We welcome new members of the project
We welcome especially our newest friends in the list of members:
– Ted L. Dutcher from Long Beach, Maryland (U.S.),
– Stefanie Rick from Königswinter (Germany)
– Ray Caruana from Aquaculture Research Centre (Malta)
Continued next newsletters.
2. First Reminder: Census Fall 2012 still running! Did you write the mail already?
Our current census of the aquarium stocks of all licorice gouramis is still running until the end of October. Did you participate already? An eMail to census@parosphromenus-project.org during this time-span is enough. If you breed your licorice gouramis, it’s very important. But if you keep only you should write your stock, too. And even if you have no licorice in your tanks: please write a short mail “no stock presently” or similar text.
Why is that useful? Because of two reasons: (1) We could see changes, not only new members who have joined the project, but old members who were active before and have become passive members now (mostly for some time only); and (2): We learn something about the present relation between active and passive members: What is presently the percentage supporting the aims of the project by active breeding and what is the percentage supporting them passively? That’s support too! Passive members who are no longer interested leave, but many more have become passive
for some special reason and nevertheless remain interested. Probably they will become active again later. – So, please think of the Census! Even if you are passive at present!
3. For the first time documented: female P. alfredi cares for larvae in the cave!
Our friend Olivier Perrin (Paris) who shot that fine P. parvulus-pictures (one of them is presently shown at our starting page) has now documented a very rare behaviour in three short movies: a female P. alfredi cares (instead of the male) within the cave for the freshly hatched larvae! There are only two published reports (without pictures) of a similar behaviour: for linkei (by H. Linke) and for paludicola (by P. Finke). In both cases the males had died or had become ill after spawning. To our knowledge caring females have never been photographically documented before. – We are grateful to Olivier for the permission of showing his films and still-photos on our website. Helene had much work to put it here on the English-alfredi-page:
https://www.parosphromenus-project.org/en/p-alfredi.html
But you can reach the links to the movies from the starting page, too.
4. Other Reminders
– Do you appear in our “member’s map” already? Have a look at the maps-button. You could be registered by name or anonymously by town only. Think of others who ask how things stand in their neighbourhood. You could give your decision (country, town, name, resp.) via mail to postmaster@parosphromenus-project.org Everybody loves to see the names, but if we are allowed to display the town only it would help!
– Don’t forget our planned international meeting in Hamburg next year. The date is September 28th /29th September. The Steering Group met there two weeks ago; it’s a nice place. At least ten species will be available, among them at least two or three undescribed forms from Sumatra. Starting populations of Moina macrocopa will be available. Think of the possibility that one person participating could take fish etc. home for all her/his friends. More informations nexts months.
5. Short notes
– We now have four species-specialists (“godfather-program”): Bernhard Lukiewski (Berlin) for quindecim, Thomas Beu (Frankfurt) for filamentosus, Andreas Gahler (Rathmannsdorf) for anjunganensis, and – new – Marius Tegethoff (Berlin) for nagyi Kuantan. If you breed, please pull yourself together and let yourself be registered for P. sp. xxx! The rule is: This person tries to have that species at any time. If somebody seeks P. sp. xxx: here he finds it, whether adult, immature or very young. Tell us your decision via newsletter@parosphromenus-project.org
– Our webmaster Helene Schoubye took part in an aquarium fair in Kopenhagen (Denmark) with a presentation of our project and website. Horst Linke sent some fish (cf. linkei) that she used together with own species for a small exhibition. See her report (with fine pictures by a professional photographer) in the European forum!
– Our friend Stefano Valdesalici (Italy) took part in an aquarium fair in Italy (“Cesena Aquabeach”). His sister prepared a nice poster about the Parosphromenus-project and he also showed some tanks with Licorice gouramis. He tells about it in our Forum (with pictures too!).
– We regret that Gregor Mecklenburg (Germany) had to resign from the steering group after a short time of cooperative work. Therefore, we are looking anew for someone responsible for the political aspects of our project (habitat destruction, nature conservation and indigene people in south-east Asia, the P-P as a citizen science-project). We would be glad to receive any application (by return mail).
– World-wide networking is one of the specialities of our project. If you seek Paro-friends in a special part of your own country or in foreign countries, please write to info@parosphromenus-project.org A short time ago a French friend wanted to know addresses in Northern America. No problem, starting from 0 in 2011 we have presently 31 for Canada and the United States.
– Our member Shi Xuan Chen from Singapore has put a link to our Project-website on his regional forum. Thank you, Shi Xuan! Could y o u do a similar thing?
– The member of our steering group, Dr. Uwe Römer, recommended our website to the renowned German “Gesellschaft für Ichthyologie” (GfI). We could hope that in short there will be a link to our homepage, too!
To all the best, until the next newsletter, your steering group.
Responsible: Peter Finke (Bielefeld/Germany).
(We always are pleased to receive proposal for improvements of the newsletter. The translations were done with the help of machine translation; please excuse any linguistic mistakes