Oreochromis amphimelas

Appearance

This is an unusual-looking tilapia: the front part of the head is very short, so it has a small eye, small mouth and short snout. The gill arches hold relatively few gill rakers: only 12–16 on the lower part of the outermost arch, the arches lack microbranchiospines and the number of dorsal fin spines is only 12–14, that is rather low compared to other Oreochromis. Females and immatures are a silvery grey, but show little sign of vertical bars on the flanks or a 'tilapia mark' at the base of the soft dorsal fin shown by most other tilapias.

Maximum recorded size is 28 cm (11 in) in standard length.

Range and habitat

The type locality is Lake Manyara in northern Tanzania. This shallow lake is a closed basin, with inflowing streams but no outflow. Recently, O. Amphimelas has been reported from another closed saline lake, Lake Sulunga (or Sulungali), near Dodoma.

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

Diet

Cichlids defend a territory or a brood. Diet in the family runs from algae scrapers to piscivores; this page does not invent a menu for one species.

In crisis

It is threatened by stocking of exotic tilapia species, among them Oreochromis esculentus, Oreochromis niloticus, Oreochromis leucostictus and Coptodon spp., all that have been reported from catchments inhabited by O. Amphimelas.

Oreochromis amphimelas 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 Oreochromis amphimelas, Wikidata item Q1827051. 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.