Cheirodon pisciculus

The characin

Cheirodon pisciculus has a maximum standard length of 5.5 cm (2.2 in).

Range and habitat

Cheirodon pisciculus is endemic to Chile, where it is found in the Huasco River basin at 28°S, south to the Rapel River basin at 34°S. This is a common species in pools with a slow or almost no current, such as the backwaters of rivers and shoreline areas of lakes, where there are aquatic macrophytes. Only larger adults are found in areas with a swifter current.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Habits

Characiforms school or hold small territories in Neotropical rivers. Many named tetras are known from one drainage that can be silted or dammed.

In crisis

Cheirodon pisciculus is classified as Endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Its range is in an area of high and growing human population, and this species is threatened by habitat degradation due to pollution and hydroelectric developments. An additional threat is the presence of invasive alien fish species such as the common carp (Cyprinus carpio), Eastern mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki), brown trout (Salmo trutta), rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and Cheirodon interruptus.

Cheirodon pisciculus is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Cheirodon pisciculus, Wikidata item Q309024. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.