Archocentrus sajica, gold

[bobrfish]

Someone told this is a morph

collected from Nature. Is that true? Anyone know the collection story?

[fishfarm]

<!--quoteo(post=3087:date=Nov

24 2006, 10:43 PM:name=bobrfish)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(bobrfish @ Nov 24 2006,

10:43 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> (index.php?act=findpost&pid=3087)</div><div

class='quotemain'>Someone told this is a morph collected from Nature. Is that true?

Anyone know the collection story?</div>
Send Rusty an e-mail,

he can tell you. Ken

[bobrfish]

Thanks, I will.

[Marco Arroyo]

You can also ask to

Juan Miguel Artigas, juan@cichlidae.com, greetings

[jfazande]

<!--quoteo(post=3267:date=Dec

9 2006, 10:55 PM:name=Marco Arroyo)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Marco Arroyo @ Dec 9

2006, 10:55 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> (index.php?act=findpost&pid=3267)</div><div

class='quotemain'>You can also ask to Juan Miguel Artigas, juan@cichlidae.com,

greetings</div>


When you get the answer, can you

post it here?

[bobrfish]

Rusty said:

I have never collected sajica .....only photographed them once in the wild, so I know they

did not come from me. A gold morph is probably just someone trying to market a fish that is

already on the market.


Juan said:

I have seem and

photograph sajica several times in the wild, I have never
seen a gold morph. That of course

does not mean it is not there somewhere,
but I doubt it. Because this kind of morphs tend to

develop in lakes and
there are no lakes in the sajica distribution, just creeks, where a

gold
morph would be easily spotted by predators. Just my thought.

[tjudy]

<!--quoteo

(post=3313:date=Dec 13 2006, 12:09 PM:name=bobrfish)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(bobrfish

@ Dec 13 2006, 12:09 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=3313"><{POST_SNAPBACK}

></a></div><div class='quotemain'>Rusty said:

I have never

collected sajica .....only photographed them once in the wild, so I know they did not come from me.

A gold morph is probably just someone trying to market a fish that is already on the

market.


Juan said:

I have seem and photograph sajica

several times in the wild, I have never
seen a gold morph. That of course does not mean it is

not there somewhere,
but I doubt it. Because this kind of morphs tend to develop in lakes

and
there are no lakes in the sajica distribution, just creeks, where a gold
morph would

be easily spotted by predators. Just my thought.</div>



Interesting... I purchased my fish from Jeff Rapps in the fall of 2005 when he

had them listed as C. sajica 'gold side' F1, which made me think that Jeff, or one

of Jeff's suppliers, has wild fish. I will ask Jeff....



.... I just

went and looked... Jeff still has them listed, but now is describing them as 'recently

collected'.

[bobrfish]

<!--quoteo(post=3330:date=Dec

15 2006, 09:12 AM:name=tjudy)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(tjudy @ Dec 15 2006,

09:12 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> (index.php?act=findpost&pid=3330)</div><div

class='quotemain'>describing them as 'recently collected'.<!--QuoteEnd--

></div>

From an aquarium http://cichlid.ipbhost.com/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/unsure.gif

[con-man-dan]

Be careful where you

purchase them from. I had an aquabid retailer sell me these as Crypto. Altoflavus. I thought I had

finally found my unicorn, only to discover they're gold side sajica. colroation is quite

lackluster compared to normal sajica, IMHO, not worth the time or money to get ahold of them.

[fishfarm]

I get gold C. sajica from the

same supplier as Jeff and he doesn't know where the original fish came from, (possibly Conkel?)

which leave the discussion wide open. I would think they are a Aquarium morph, F1 is doubtful. But

we found gold morph C. spilurum in the Rio Blanco, Honduras two years ago (and in a small river at

that!) and before then I'd have said the same thing about them. Ken

[Argentum]

I have sajica "gold

side" and the info i have is that they are collected in Panama, but that is all i know.
I

am pretty shure that they occure in the wild.

[puchisapo]

i would like to revive

this old thread. i am interested in knowing about wild-collected C. sajica with data or

their progeny. i was just asking Ken about this. does anybody know about any collections of this

fish in recent years?

...oh, and this reminds me. i still don't know the correct

moniker. is it "Archocentrus" or "Cryptoheros"?

[Lisachromis]

It's marked as

Cryptoheros here - http://www.cichlidae.com/gallery/species.php?s=201

[Dean Hougen]

Here is my take on

this. (I posted a slightly different version of this on another forum just last week.)

Archocentrus or Cryptoheros?

Archocentrus was described 130 years

ago as a subgenus of Heros. Since that time it has mostly been ignored because, for the most

part, subgenera (like Rodney Dangerfield) don't get no respect.

However, things

changed a couple of decades ago when ichthyologist Sven Kullander started really restricting genera

of American cichlids. This meant people couldn't call all those Central American cichlids

Heros or Cichlasoma anymore. So, what can you do when that happens? Well, one thing

you can do is move subgeneric names up to full genus level. That is what happened with

Archocentrus.

So, for a couple of decades, people who paid attention to what

Central American cichlids are called tended to call convicts, and t-bar cichlids, and topaz

cichlids, and a bunch of similar species Archocentrus, which was all well and good except

for one tiny problem.

The tiny problem was (and is) that Archocentrus centrarchus

is the type species of Archocentrus but A. centrarchus has a lot of differences from

convicts, and t-bar cichlids, and topaz cichlids, and all the other fish people were calling

Archocentrus. So, a lot of people suspected that when ichthyologists got around to revising

the nomenclature for these fish, most of them wouldn't be included in Archocentrus any

more (just A. centrarchus) and would be moved to a new genus of their own.

However, as I said, the problem was a tiny one, so most people were content to wait and see.

Unfortunately, one person was not content to wait and see. He got impatient and decided to do

something about it. That person was a French aquarist named Robert Allgayer, who turned a tiny

problem into a bigger one.

Allgayer made the problem bigger by writing an article for an

obscure French aquarium publication proposing a new genus, which he called Cryptoheros, with

the intention of it serving to hold convicts, and t-bars, and topaz cichlids, and so forth.

Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with proposing a new genus -- in fact, proposing new

genera to accommodate fish that don't fit well elsewhere is necessary for the system to work.

There isn't even anything inherently wrong with the proposer being an aquarium hobbyist rather

than a professional ichthyologist, or putting the article in a hobby publication rather than an

ichthyological journal, or even writing it in French rather than American English -- the rules of

zoological nomenclature allow for all those things because science is supposed to be open for

anyone to contribute, as long as you do a good job.

But, this is where Allgayer went

wrong. He didn't do a good job with proposing his new genus. He did a bad one. Bad enough that

ichthyologists have rejected his genus.

Unfortunately, that isn't the end of the

story. Why? Because a lot of fish hobbyists were waiting for a new genus for these fish for two

decades and when a new one came along, they didn't wait to see if it would be accepted by the

scientific community. Instead they jumped on it and began using it and still continue to use it,

even though the scientific community is using Archocentrus for these same fish and is

waiting for someone to do a good job erecting a new genus for them.

Dean

[bobrfish]

I had read that Cryptoheros

was rejected by well known scientists but did not know anything about Archocentrus problem from

earlier on.

Thanks Dean.

[Lisachromis]

<!--quoteo

(post=6027:date=Aug 14 2007, 10:03 PM:name=Dean Hougen)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Dean

Hougen @ Aug 14 2007, 10:03 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=6027"><

{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>Here is my take on this. (I posted

a slightly different version of this on another forum just last week.)

Archocentrus

or Cryptoheros?

[<snip>
Dean</div><!--QuoteEEnd--

>

Care to take that to the Cichlid Room Companion forum as well? I think it would make a

very interesting discussion.

I'm always into learning more about taxonomy.

[Dean Hougen]

Lisa,

Sure,

I'd be happy to take it over there. I've been meaning to join that forum as well for quite

some time. There is a lot more that could be said about this topic (such as what to make of Martin

& Bermingham 1998). My post was really just meant to be a very high-level overview of how I

saw things but could be a good conversation starter, since I intentionally made some of my

statements opinionated.

It will probably take me a couple of days to get there, though.

I'm running out of fishy time for right now.


Dean

[Lisachromis]

<!--quoteo

(post=6054:date=Aug 16 2007, 01:24 AM:name=Dean Hougen)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Dean

Hougen @ Aug 16 2007, 01:24 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=6054"><

{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>Lisa,

Sure, I'd be

happy to take it over there. I've been meaning to join that forum as well for quite some time.

There is a lot more that could be said about this topic (such as what to make of Martin &

Bermingham 1998). My post was really just meant to be a very high-level overview of how I saw

things but could be a good conversation starter, since I intentionally made some of my statements

opinionated.

It will probably take me a couple of days to get there, though. I'm

running out of fishy time for right now.
Dean</div>

Well... looking forward to seeing you there as well. And just so you know... I don't forget.

LOL http://cichlid.ipbhost.com/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/laugh.gif
I understand about running out of

fishy time.... http://cichlid.ipbhost.com/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif

[puchisapo]

Dean

thanks

for the explanation. so, until somebody cleans it all up it's Archocentrus i guess.

i would like to revisit my original question. does anybody know who might have

sajica?

[Lisachromis]

Our local club has been

overrun with them in the last 6 years or so. It's been so bad at times that people make

"mercy" buys at auctions to keep things moving.

[puchisapo]

what about Chicago area?

does anybody know if anybody around Chicago has sajica?

-D