Critically Endangered
Titicaca orestias
Orestias cuvieri
With a total length of up to 27 cm (10.6 in), it was the largest member in that genus.
Appearance
The upperside was greenish-yellow to umber. Its scales were oddly light coloured at their centre. The scales of the young were blotched.
With a total length of up to 27 cm (10.6 in), it was the largest member in that genus. The head took up nearly a third of the whole body length.
Range and habitat
The freshwater fish belonging to the genus Orestias are found in high-altitude isolated lakes in the Altiplano region of South America, ranging from Peru to Chile. Lake Titicaca, that is on the border of Peru and Bolivia, contains a wide variety of Orestias fish. This large lake was once the home to Titicaca orestias before their extinction.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Habits
Nothing has been published about the reproduction of the Titicaca orestias, but in other Orestias species of Lake Titicaca, the males become more orange or yellow in color when they are spawning.
In crisis
The Titicaca orestias, Lake Titicaca orestias, or Lake Titicaca flat-headed fish, also known by its native name amanto, is a likely extinct freshwater killifish from Lake Titicaca in South America. In the hope that an undiscovered population remains, it is listed as Critically Endangered, possibly extinct by the IUCN. The Titicaca orestias became extinct due to competition by introduced trout like the lake trout, brown trout, or the rainbow trout as well as Argentinian silverside from the 1930s to the 1950s.
Two of these introductions were successful: rainbow trout introduced in 1942 and silverside (Odontesthes bonariensis) in the early 1950s. Fifty years ago, there was no sign of Titicaca orestias in Lake Titicaca and the species was presumed to be extinct.
Titicaca orestias 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 Titicaca orestias, Wikidata item Q454534. 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.
