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| Welcome to the January edition of Cichlid News. It’s a new year and also a time for resolutions. Let’s all resolve to take better care of our fish, to spend ‘quality’ time observing their behaviors and sharing our observations with the fish hobby (perhaps through these pages, or those of your local club’s journal), and perhaps even commit to the long term maintenance of one or more cichlids whose status in the wild is endangered. If I may, The Cares Preservation Program (www.carespreservation.com), founded in 2004 and run by ACA Fellow Claudia Dickinson, is enlisting dedicated hobbyists to help in maintaining endangered aquarium fish in general, and several cichlids specifically, in the hobby. One such example is the beautiful fulu ‘Haplochromis’ cyaneus from Lake Victoria whose taxonomic status and aquarium husbandry is reviewed by Greg Steeves in this issue. But this is only one of several Lake Victorian and other cichlids worldwide whose declining presence make them objects of conservational concern. David Hansen writes about a rare and unusual cichlid from Iran—the only known cichlid from that country—and one whose endangered status in the wild is also currently unclear, Iranocichla hormuzensis. What is clear about this fish, however, is its challenging captive husbandry and spawning, and its continued rarity in the hobby. Another regular contributor, Patrick Tawil reviews the status of the Chalinochromis species as they are closely related to species of the genus Julidochromis. In reviewing the diagnostic characters that have been used in defense of the creation of the genus Chalinochromis, Patrick suggests that Chalinochromis and Julidochromis should be synonymized, or at least the former downgraded to the subgenus level. Continuing in the vein of taxonomic reappraisal, Ad Konings discusses the recent erection of the genus Abactochromis by Oliver & Arnegard (2010) to hold the species labrosus, most recently classified in the genus Melanochromis. Although still considered an mbuna, this cichlid is sufficiently distinct from the other species usually classified as such to warrant its removal from Melanochromis. Finally, I offer my own attempt at sorting out the current taxonomy and nomenclature of that group of South American acaras known in the American hobby as the ‘green terrors’. A new species, stalsbergi, has been recently described (2009) and a new genus Andinoacara erected to hold it and the other ‘green terrors’. This is, however, still a work in progress with the jury still out on the status of And. rivulatus and several other species previously ‘lumped’ with it. |
Wayne S. Leibel, Editor  |
