This is the story of fundulopanchax powelli. This is a tiny obscure fish found in a man-made pond on an island off the coast of Africa and the Niger Delta in Nigeria.
What's interesting about it is this fish, which only one person has ever seen, changed the entire face of Killifish taxonomy.
The problem was it appeared to be some sort of Relic species. It's ancient, and we can't even tell what genius it goes in, let alone what species. Is it an epiplatys, is it a roloffia, is it aphyosemion, is it a fundolupanchax? Hard to say.
They were found by a professor of ichthyology at Yaounde University in Cameron who collected in the region, stored samples, and made notes. One time he caught a batch of fish and sent them preserved to the m Rock Museum in Belgium, the Museum of something Africa something. it's Museum in Belgium that has all the stuff from Belgian exploits in Africa. There's a lot of specimens stored there. he saved these things. They were the usual collection of epiplatyus and aphyosemion and Barbs, but there was one that stuck out because it was black.
it looked like a big aphyosemion; but it was a black fish. the observation that it was black was only made once by Mr Powell who was the icthyologist in Younde. he's the only person that's ever seen this fish alive. he preserved immediately and sent them to amrac where Jouke van der Zee was working as a grad student.
I believe he's pretty famous anyway he looked at these fish and he got very serious about looking into them and examined the bones of the skulls or the frontal scalation the bones of the fins the backbone. He examined everything and when you take all this very good data about all these very Arcane metrics and you look up in the big list of lots of genus and what you know why is it. how you delineate the genera. this problem arose because the way we differentiate Genera stems from Parentis 1981 thesis. Iit was the first time anybody had ever described all the Killi genera and said he's curious about the characteristics are for fish to be qualified to be in this genus before that they really wasn't Brothers
Before this no method existed to delineate or differentiate genera of Killifish; it was pretty ad hoc. Parenti's Mentor at the AMNH, Myers, produce one large as the last one of the last things he did he revised to killifish families and suggested one day someone should do the genera. Parenti picked this up and started work in the mid seventies that's when I was talking to tony terrceria and he was mentioning he was working with her and by 1981 this thing was published.
said he wants to genus what characters are supposed to fish have how we can tell. so here's the problem with powelli it has two characteristics that existed one says is strictly a fundulopanchax and another one says it's strictly aphyosemion. when our rules and observations about the fish disagree with nature, it's not nature that's wrong so our method of delineating that is incorrect.
We still don't know what species this thing is or where it fits in the old roll group scheme of things. In terms of species groups but we haven't found people just broke aphyosemion and panchax. Jouke van der zee, the scientist, not only had to describe the species, he had to find the way to describe fundulopanchax so you could differentiate it from aphysomeion and this was helping. at a time when molecular data wasn't so great, now we do all sorts of DNA testing, back then it was a big deal. to see was the finrays and the scales and bones of the skull. Granted, you're relying heavily on the bones of the skull and three the first major work to be published as far as I know that used heads bones to differentiate species, and scale counts and into tiny little bones microscopic bones.
so in a little DNA osteology was the way to go. Parenti used to use conventional heuristics and osteology to produce for work, Van Der Zee then found a flaw in the aphyosemion front of the panchax singer that would be mentioned to me at least by Raymond Raymond in about 1997. you can't differentiate functions and there's no one thing or group of things that only after savings ever only fundulopanchax acts up, and worse they need to breed, they pretty much all interbreed, so this just breaks conventional rules of biology all over the place.
it's one of the rules of the whether what is a species is can the interbreed with of species of the other Genera, and if they are they're in the same genera now. That rule was made up by a guy who worked with frogs; that may not only apply to fish because fish for very different Genera. it's killies will have to breed but not only about genus room so that rule made up G first and putting us the jury still out we have we think pretty good idea species and osteology so Juke did come up with a list of six characteristics to look for and while none of them are unique if you can get all six to go to the panchax way that is really probably the function if you know all six or maybe four or five out of six to get discovered that break this rule set as well. which makes the whole question of what fundulopanchax actually want I've seen me this much more interesting Things like Herzogi or Radaella, Kunzi, Batesii. they're so far from what the temperature is they actually were fundulopanchax for a while because they look acting smell and feel like fundulopanchax.
but they're sucker is supposed to be for some tiny butterfly so aphyosemion was a mess, everyone knows it, it's been a Dumping Ground for Killies that don't fit anywhere else. Splitting up aphyosemion is a nightmare because it's over 130 species now and it's not clear what the relationships are. it would probably take a century to clarify that; who knows maybe your grandkids will once again see S and aphyosemion placed together.
all this because of fish that I'm seeing other than the guy that found it through a picture of it. There is a picture of the dryer Preserved specimen but it's unknown real life coloration. we do know a bit because red pigment is preserved. museums this fish has no red pigment which is very very unusual for a killifish. maybe the only killifish and you ran in it. that's weird the fact that it's black. it's hard to see what it is it maybe if I know a bad sex, maybe a more ancient Relic form of something halfway between the lobby.
this is what it looks like to me: there's a whole species group of those fish that are halfway between fundulopanchax and if you thought he's just and there are fish in that genus that used to be aphyosemion now on the same genus. because they were neither they're beautiful in the same way is epiplatys and the applies after your brachios rule let me get forms between one genus and another so a little fish that knows ever seen and we don't know what the hell it is, change the entire face of Killi taxonomy. picked it up a notch and proved it and while that works in the Practical sense, it doesnt work in the African rainforest.