How many species in Corydoradinae?

[unotim123]

Somebody says over 200,somebody says over 300 and everybody says different things.In some websites different species available for example funnelli,mexo etc.But these species not available in cat e log.So that I coudnlt sure with this.Are there more species than cat e log and as it mentioned all of them are over 300?

[MatsP]

Probably depends on how you count, and whether you include undescribed species, local variations, etc.

In the Catelog, we have 349 species in Callichthyidae. There are a few of those that are not Corydoradinae: Callichthys, Megalechis, Hoplosternum, and other "Hoplo" types. I made a rough count of 10 species that are NOT Corydoradinae. If we ONLY take described [1] species, then we have 185 species in total, 175 species if we take away the 10 species that are not Corydoradinae.

I know there are a few "undescribed" species we do NOT have, and probably a few described species too - and of course, no one REALLY knows how many undescribed species there are in nature [part of which depends on how small a difference makes two similar fish into different species].

To validate the Cat-eLog "correctness", I checked with Catalog of Fishes, which lists the number of species in a Family/Subfamily, and it says 180 valid species - looks like we are missing about 5 here...

COF also lists 17 valid species of Callichthyinae (the generas Callichthyidae, Hoplosternum, Megalechis, etc) - so we are obviously missing 7 of those species.

[1] This is not an exact measure - the "Described" feature that is available in the Cat-eLog search if you know how to access it doesn't actually know if a species is described or not, but uses some other fields in the database to infer this information. [This is part of why it's not publicly available].

--
Mats

[CoryWally]

Have a go at counting them.

There's around 160 C numbers (aqualog), 50 CW (CorydorasWorld) numbers (C and CW: fish that are or were undescribed) - but then many of these fish have since been determined as solid species or varieties of the same species.

For total of described species get Ian Fuller and Hans Georg-Ever's book on I.d ing Corydoradinae. Theres a few more been described since (longipinnis, ortegai of the top of my head). Or go to Corydoras World.

Plus if you want to drop down to the rest of Corydoradinae, dont forget Aspidoras (20+, plus C numbers), Brochis (3 plus some CW's) and Scleormystax (6 plus C and CW numbers).

Should be over 300.

Mark.

[Coryman]

There are currently:
Aspidoras = 20
Brochis = 3
Corydoras = 152
Scleromystax = 6
C-numbers = 150 - 33 have been proven to be valid species. = 127
CW-numbers = 50 - one has been described since being given a CW-number = 49
Grand total = 381 species

There are probability a lot more species out there awaiting discovery.

Ian