Critically Endangered
Oreochromis mortimeri
Oreochromis mortimeri
Oreochromis mortimeri is found in the rivers of south central Africa especially the middle Zambezi where it is endangered by the spread of invasive congener Oreochromis niloticus.
Appearance
Oreochromis mortimeri is greenish grey, green-blue or grey-blue marked with darker spots on each of its scales. The females and immature males often have 1–3 dark blotches in the middle of their flanks although these may only be visible as the fish dies. The breeding males are mainly iridescent, shading from blue-green to bronze and they have iridescent spots on their dorsal and caudal fins.
Range and habitat
Oreochromis mortimeri is endemic to the middle Zambezi valley form the Cahora Bassa gorge to the Victoria Falls. Its distribution includes the Luangwa River and its tributaries. It occurs in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Zambia.
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 found in the rivers of south central Africa especially the middle Zambezi where it is endangered by the spread of invasive congener Oreochromis niloticus. The IUCN classify O. Mortimeri as Critically Endangered and the main threat to this species is the invasive Oreochromis niloticus that has been introduced into most of the range of O. Mortimeri by aquaculture and by anglers. It was also found that O. Niloticus is more aggressive towards O. Mortimeri and that the larger the size of individual O. Niloticus then the more aggressive it was to smaller specimens of O. Mortimeri, the higher growth rates of the invasive species meaning that they were normally the larger individuals.
Oreochromis mortimeri 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 mortimeri, Wikidata item Q6412653. 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.
