The history of discovery of the Licorice Gouramis has lasted for 150 years

The discovery of these fish began 150 years ago and is not complete today.

In 1859, the Dutch ichthyologist, Pieter Bleeker, discovered a small labyrinth fish that no one knew, during an ichthyological field study on the island of Bangka. He described it as Osphronemus deissneri. In 1877 however, he considered the differences to the known species of that genus as too significant and therefore decided to set up a new genus Parosphromenus for this small single fish. Unfortunately, the letters n and m were interchanged and since then left in this positions.
As we know now, this particular fish was female and during its lifetime it did not show the spectacular colors, for which the male fish of today’s genus Parosphromenus are famous. Even worse, the tail fin of the type specimen was lost later and confusion about the true identity of this fish continued until today. In 1998, an updated description and deposit of a new type specimen by Ng and Kottelat ended this confusion formally, but in fact the discussion is still going on.  It is unclear if the correct type out of two species of Licorice Gourami occuring on Bangka Island, has been chosen for description. The second form, discovered on the island, was identified as P. bintan by these authors, as it was also found on the island of Bintan.

Until the beginning of  1950s, only one single type of Licorice Gourami was ”officially” known: P. Deissneri. In 1952 a second form showed up, for which the differentiation was undeniable due to its completely different appearance and color: P paludicola, found in the very north of peninsula Malaysia, described by the zoological curator of the Raffles Museum in Singapore. 1955, the ichthyologist Klausewitz from Frankfurt described another Licorice Gourami, which he discovered as a ”bycatch” at a German ornamental fish importer’s. He addressed it cautiously as a subspecies of the first known type deissneri and described the fish as Parosphromenus deissneri sumatranus. Only 40 years later Kubota, and shortly after this Kottelat, recognized that P.sumatranus has to be regarded as  a distinct species. Walter Foersch published detailed research findings on the natural requirements and on the breeding of this fish, which he hadreceived from 1968 onwards. This pushed the knowledge about the Licorice Gourami in the aquarium forward, but brought no gain in knowledge regarding the history of discovery, because he still believed  he was dealing with P.deissneri. In fact the fish originated from Ayer Hitam and thus it is likely he  kept and investigated what we know today as P.tweediei.

In 1979, again in Germany, the description of another new species was published, which had been found one year previously in Borneo by Edith Korthaus, Alfred Hanratty and the married couple Foersch / Palangan. Jörg Vierke named it P. parvulus. Two years later he described another new species (P. filamentosus), which was found close to Banjarmasin by the same discoverers. R. Ottinger discovered another form of Licorice Gourami in 1984 close to Bukit Merah in Western Malaysia. This type, which he thought was something particular, was described as P. rubrimontis only in 2005 by Kottelat and Ng. The next ”new” species was P. nagyi, described 1985 by D. Schaller, followed by P. allani and P. harveyi, named by Barbara Brown in 1987 in honor of her husband and of German-British Paro pioneer Willi Harvey.  By now it was clear that the old idea that there was only one species of Parosphromenus had become absolutely unsustainable. So, especially in the nineties, further new species were searched for, found and described. In 1990 Kottelat found a form near Anjungan, which resembled parvulus, but was completely different in color. One year later he described it as P. ornicaudata. In the same  area, Neugebauer and Linke found another new Licorice Gourami species, which was described as P. anjunganensis by Kottelat in the following year. The two discoverers caught another two unknown forms from close to Sukamara in the Southwest of Borneo, which were again described by Kottelat as P. linkei in 1991 and (together with Ng) as P. opallius in 2005.,

In 1991 and 1992, Lim and Ng collected close to Kota Tinggi in Johore a further Licorice Gourami, which differed significantly from the already known forms, later (2005) described as P. alfredi.  
In 1996 Philipp Dickmann and Frank Grams found Licorice Gouramis near Melak and Jengan Danum, which were described by Kottelat in 2005 as P. pahuensis. In this description an ”old case” was solved, because since the end of the thirties, some Licorice Gouramis with very red colored fins had been found in Johore close to Pontoan and Ayer Hitam. This form was then described as an own species P. tweediei.

At the time of publication of this new description, several other new forms of Parosphromenus were already known and since then further species have been added to the list, many of them still not scientifically identified. So up to now it is not clear if these new forms have a status of species or sub-species, but it is very likely due to their development in separate river systems (adaptive radiation).

All this means: even today the history of discovery of this genus is not yet completed.

(PF) (DA)