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Killifish conservation program robertsoni



Hi Scott,
 
          >I sent Tim Addis Roloff's pictures of the pre-WW II filamentosus
 strain and he has them on his incredible website. Roloff did not collect the
 fish. It was an importation into Germany in the early 30's.
 
 >Gee, see what happens to one's memory after 20 years? Thank you for the
 correction though. Mouth and fingers are more active than brain.


     Don't worry, I only remembered because I had recently looked up Roloff's 
article for Tim.

 
 > In an article for
 > the BKA, Scheel stated that he felt it had been captured near Old Calabar
 in
 > Nigeria. It would be wonderful if someone could try that area some time to
 > see if that beautiful strain of filamentosus is indeed a population.


 
 >The area east of the Cross River (modern Calabar is in the state called
 Cross River according to the map recently downloaded) is a different
 province from the rest of Nigeria as far as some killies are concerned. That
 is home to ndianum and the various gardneri mamfensis - including the
 disputed subspecies gar obuduense (going east) as opposed to the westerly
 yellow gardneris. I seem to remember that Ep. sexfasciatus togolensis gives
 way to the prettier, but more challenging Ep. sexfasciatus infrafasciatus.
 Additionally Ep. biafranus and maybe Fp scheeli call that area home
 Chromaphyosemion bitaeniatum gives way to Chroma. bivittatum about there
 too. Is Fp. spoorenbergi from that area as well?
 
 >Collecting the coastal rainforest in that vicinity is a tantalizing thought.
 One wonders what form of blue gularis would be found. The area seems as
 killie diverse per square kilometer as Cameroon. Don't know if political
 conditions would allow it.


         It does seem that this area is a killie goldmine. I hope someone 
goes looking one day. I was looking at pictures of F. rubrolabiale and there 
is a certain resemblance to the Roloff filamentosus. The picture of the Ikeja 
population of filamentosus on Tim's webpage also bares a close resemblance to 
the old Roloff strain. Could it be that the original filamentosus was not the 
filamentosus we have today or have had since the 50's? There seems to be 4 
species here that are very closely related -- arnoldi, filamentosum, 
robertsoni and rubrolabiale. Roloff's strain looks a bit different from all 4 
-- certainly from arnoldi which is quite different from the other 3. Could we 
have  5 species here or just a really special population? Did we misidentify 
filamentosus in the 50's when it came back in or did we not? I wonder if 
there are any other photos of the Roloff filamentosus around in old German 
fish magazines. It was in the hobby from 1932 until 1947. I wonder. Look at 
the range of variety in fallax. Maybe filamentosus is as varied.


 
   >BTW, the photos in Sterba of "arnoldi" are of a 1950's population of
 > filamentosus that was introduced into Germany after the war. It was called
 > "arnoldi" by mistake.
 
 >George Maier used to notice that a lot of fish traded for as arnoldi were
 filamentosum too. The same frustrating mistake.


         That was Aquarium Hamburg's fault. They called the population of 
filamentosus that they imported in the early 1950's arnoldi. I suppose 
Ladiges made the ID mistake as he was AH's in house expert. They sold this 
false "arnoldi" all over the world and Sterba pictures it in his book, as 
does Axelrod in his older books. Scheel's strain of the true arnoldi (ROTOW) 
was around the AKA a bit in the early 60's, but it looks like Tony Terceira's 
recent importation of that legendary species might finally do the trick in 
establishing an aquarium strain.

 
 >Innes has a photo of a pre-WW II filamentosus, but
 > identifies it as "gardneri." I think there were two strains of
 filamentosus
 > in Germany before the war and one was called "gardneri." The "gardneri"
 one
 > (pictured in Innes?) was considered very difficult to breed, but the
 > Meinken/Roloff strain (the one pictured in Roloff's JAKA's article from
 the
 > 70's and now on Tim's webpage) was not thought of as being so difficult.
 The
 > Meinken/Roloff strain is a beautiful fish. Everyone should take a look at
 it.
 
 >Thank you Robert and Tony for your insights. These are beautiful killies,
 none are seen as often as they should be in the hobby.

      The jumble of 
arnoldi/filamentosus/walkeri/gardneri/fallax/batesii/gulare importations into 
Europe between 1910 and 1940 is a fascinating story and one I believe we 
still have never worked out. The task is probably impossible as photos 
probably do not exist for most of them and the drawings are poor at best -- 
look at Meinken's "fantasy" drawing of filamentosus! I wonder what all was 
imported then.
      We should debate calabarica vs liberiensis next. I still think 
calabarica was a different species and wish I still had it.
 
Robert E.
 
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 From: "Scott Davis" <unclescott at prodigy_net>
 To: <killietalk at aka_org>
 References: <163.a320542.29bfc2cd at aol_com>
 Subject: Re:  Killifish conservation program robertsoni
 Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 18:56:42 -0600
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