Critically Endangered
Ptychochromis insolitus
Ptychochromis insolitus
Ptychochromis insolitus, also known as the Mangarahara cichlid or joba mena, is a cichlid endemic to certain river systems in northern Madagascar.
Appearance
It was given the species name insolitus (the Latin word for 'queer' or 'unusual') in part because of its peculiar appearance, featuring long tooth- or comb-like structures called cteni on many of its scales.
This species can reach a standard length of 10 inches or 25.8 cm.
Description The Mangarahara cichlid was first described as a new species in 2006 from the Amboaboa and Mangarahara Rivers near Mandritsara in northern Madagascar.
Range and habitat
Ptychochromis insolitus, also known as the Mangarahara cichlid or joba mena, is a cichlid endemic to certain river systems in northern Madagascar. This critically endangered fish is threatened by habitat loss and competition from introduced species. After the last-known female was killed during a breeding attempt, its conservation received significant international attention as London Zoo launched a media campaign to identify any remaining individuals.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
A remnant population was discovered by aquaculture entrepreneur Guy Tam Hyock in 2013, and breeding programs in Madagascar and at Toronto Zoo have resulted in thousands of successful hatchlings.
In crisis
Territoriality and rivalry among the maturing siblings contributed to several cichlid deaths, and by 2005, only two male individuals remained in the zoo's collection. The fish was declared extinct in the wild. Approximately ten days after the two individuals were moved to a spawning tank, Aquarium Berlin announced that the male cichlid had killed its would-be mate.
Guy Tam Hyock offered to show representatives from London Zoo to a small pond near Marotandrano where he believed a population of the fishes remained. In late 2013, Toronto Zoo and London Zoo confirmed that a remnant population existed in the wild at the location Guy Tam Hyock specified.
Ptychochromis insolitus 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 Ptychochromis insolitus, Wikidata item Q5260450. 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.
