Oreochromis karongae

Appearance

Breeding males are black with white edges to the fins and are extremely similar to breeding male O. Lidole, while females are more yellowish-brown than females of O. Lidole and O. Squamipinnis. The lepidophagous cichlid Corematodus shiranus is an aggressive mimic of chambo in both color pattern and swimming mode. It is, therefore, able to approach unsuspecting schools of chambo and rapidly take a mouthful of scales or fin.

It can reach a total length of 42 centimetres (17 in).

Range and habitat

Oreochromis karongae is a critically endangered species of cichlid that is endemic to Lake Malawi, Lake Malombe, and upper and middle Shire River in Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania.

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

Breeding

The breeding males of chambo have long genital tassels that somewhat resemble fish eggs. During breeding, the female attempts to pick them up with her mouth and this helps the male in fertilizing the female's eggs, already in her mouth.

In crisis

This species is important to local commercial fisheries, but has declined drastically due to overfishing.

Oreochromis karongae is Critically 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 karongae, Wikidata item Q2236249. 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.