Sphaerichthys vaillanti

Appearance

The male and female of this species have great sexual dimorphism as the females are brightly colored red with a predominant green and dark vertical stripes. The males are much simpler with a dull reddish brown with a few vertical and horizontal white lines. Juveniles are brown with clear caudal tails and white markings throughout.

The species reaches about 6 cm (2.5 inches) in standard length and is known to be a facultative air-breather.

Range and habitat

It is native to Asia, where it is known from mainly the Kapuas river in the west Kalimantan, (Kalimantan Barat), region of Borneo in Indonesia.

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

Habits

Unlike many other fish species, the female of these mouthbrooders actually initiates the courting behavior, and during this time, they will remain upright for many hours during reproduction.

In crisis

This species is threatened in many ways in that it is an endemic species to Borneo. It is very sought after in the aquarium trade, making it vulnerable to going extinct due to mass collection. Habitat destruction and pollution from illegal gold mining also threaten this gourami, as by the time of discovery and conservation attempts it is speculated that a good amount of the population was already lost to human actions.

Sphaerichthys vaillanti 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 Sphaerichthys vaillanti, Wikidata item Q5644142. 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.