As mentioned before... the L236 "identification" game

[Ltygress]

I mentioned before that I had gotten L236 from two sources. One of them was confirmed as a good source, the other I'm not so sure. The seller would only tell me "private breeder in the Phillipines."

The PRICE was in line with others I have seen, but the appearance screams L450 to me more than L236. So here are the pictures I got today. My apologies for the yellow coloring - my camera's white balance is HORRIBLY out of whack. But it's not the coloring I'm worried about. It's the pattern.

Okay, it looks like photobucket deleted my old account, so here they are in a public FB album instead:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set ... 580b74a446

As you can see, the white coloring on them is VERY thin, but the black coloring is very THICK. And the dorsal fin looks exactly like one I saw on an L450 (number of stripes, direction, etc.)

Thoughts? Opinions?

(Ignore the one with the red X. He is indeed a full grown L046. Can't mistake that one!)

[gehandylan]

I know very little about L236 but checked out a group of L236 that was on sale just yesterday. Except one, yours don't look very much like the L236s I saw yesterday or the pics I have seen on the internet. With so much mislabeling going on with L236, it is important to know the source where it came from. Given the high degree of variability in L236 patterns, I could be horribly wrong on this.

Your other US supplier on the other hand is 100% credible who has documented his L236 project very thoroughly.

I'll let the experts chime in on this.

[TwoTankAmin]

I tend to agree they do not look like the 236 I have. And they could be 450 which I do have. But my 236 all came from one source. I had tried for a few years to find them reliably. But I also was not knowledgeable enough to look at them and be certain of what they were, especially as youngsters. But when I learned Eric B. was selling his offspring, I jumped on that. It was why I had no qualms at all buying his fish. I felt if there was any chance to be reasonably certain of getting whatever might be an actual 236, it would come from a trusted seller like him.

If one considers the senior members and staff on this site, I would tend to feel the same way in terms of trusting them to have it right. While I have never been able to master the skills to ID plecos, I am smart enough to learn who does and to trust their judgement.

Here is the one thing I do know about the B&W Hypans. The only one's I can positively identify at any size are zebras. When it comes to fry I will not mix any of mine in grow out tanks except for with zebras. Further, I have a video Rachel shot of my 173 fry, I am too ignorant to get it uploaded to my host site, I tried and failed. But once she has it online or I figure it out, I will show folks. There are 13 offspring that do not look consistent, but I know they are all the same fish because I can track them back to their parents for sure. The parents all look similar. As my 236 age, they still tend to look different from each other, some less so and others moreso, so too do the parents. But they are all pretty fish, so I am happy.

[Ltygress]

I figured another issue with all of this has to do with what you say about your L236 never actually looking "consistent" as fry. If L236 can vary that much (as we assume) then it COULD be possible that a breeder in the phillipines would have some looking drastically different than ours.

I created and run the L134 group on Facebook, and there was a post from a guy in Australia showing off some he had rescued from a very bad keeper. In the post, he explains that Australia does not allow L134 to be imported into the country anymore (if it applies to other pleco species, I don't know). But then he points out that he has never seen L134s looking like that, and they look more like "the U.S. types" of L134.

I explained to him that here in the U.S., we still get many wild-caught leopard frog plecos imported straight from Brazil, so ours were probably closer to the wild type. But L134 in his country have the thick bands on their bodies, even as adults - the stripes never thin out with age like ours do here.

But whether it was something that they just ended up with from the captive-bred L134s, or whether the Australian L134 was crossed with another species at some point, no one knows. But to hear of two different types of an actual known species, from different countries, is interesting.

I imagine the L236 went through the same issues. And like you already stated, they may be NOTHING like the old wild-caught versions. I guess the only real answer is DNA testing.

[Ltygress]

By the way, speaking of DNA, I had a coversation with a friend of mine who is a microbiologist at the CDC here in Atlanta. She explained the steps needed to be able to do DNA testing for plecos - to identify and verify species.

Apparently the Univerisity of Toronto has already "mapped out" pleco DNA and determined which parts differ between the species. From there, it would require hiring a biologist in a university lab to lay out the "map" as it relates to each species. Then, with the purchase of basic equipment, a match-game of sorts would begin to identify which L-numbers are the same, which are different, which are crosses, etc.

So if anyone here wants to hire a local university biologist for the species mapping, I'll be more than happy to start a registry to "track" pleco species and/or "certify" if they are pure or hybrids...

[Jools]

Using DNA alone, all the stripey Xingu species are the same thing except those described and L174.

Jools

[Ltygress]

So if they all have the exact same DNA.... they are really all the same species?

[Jools]

Yes if you are describing species on that alone. However, I didn't say that had the exact same DNA, what I said (shorthand) was that the bits of their DNA we've tested are the same.

There is more to this as we also use traditional morphometrics and other techniques to delineate what we pidgeonhole species as.

So, best to park if it's a species or not. L236 is basically a medium sized Hypancistrus that is more white than black. As many populations tend to breed or be selected for more white during captive breeding it makes this pretty messy.

Jools

[bekateen]

So if they all have the exact same DNA.... they are really all the same species?

Ltygress, you may find this article helpful: A good primer on describing/indentifying fish species

[Jools]

Sorry, stripey Hypancistrus is a poor description from me. What I meant is all the wavy line stripey ones, so also excluding H. zebra and

L250

. It's not straightforward!

Jools

[Ltygress]

It seems to me as though we have gone beyond the point of identifying species. So all of those are considered "the same species" by basic DNA. Got it.

What I think we're discovering now is BREED, much like dogs, cats, rabbits, etc. All dogs belong to the canine species, just as all of those plecos appear to be the same species.. But you have German Shepherds, Labradors, Chihuahuas, Dachshunds, etc. - different breeds of the same species.

A large number of dog breeds were created by man, although I am sure nature had some part (unless someone was REALLY that damn patient to breed enough generations to create a dachshund out of a great dane, or vice versa, to get the right SIZE and shape). And L236 has definitely been a "man-made" thing for the most part, by the special selection you speak of. People want a brighter white pleco, so that is what others are breeding towards, and what L236 is slowly becoming.

And individual breeds... still breed true. It is only when crossing breeds that you get the unpredictable results, which leaves me to believe that's what the L236 is - a mutt.

Birds and reptiles are the only other pets I can think of right now, that have not yet been classified into separate breeds. But pythons are quickly helping the reptile world gain that status, with the many variants available today.

I'm mostly just rambling here, but it just seems that the division you speak of, Jools, should be considered separate breeds of one species. And it seems L236 would either be a breed in development (with the super-whites), or a mutt.

[bekateen]

No, L066, L333, L236, etc., are not "breeds" as are domestic dogs because the plecos occur in nature. All dogs are human line-bred. There were not different starting natural species to get to wiener dogs and great danes.

But L066, L333 and the others do (or did) exist in nature. Biologists call them geographic phenotypic variation of one (or few) species.

Where you are correct is that once we remove a few fish from the wild and start breeding them, we are inadvertently creating a new line-bred subtype. You may call them mutts when you get different offspring from two wild parents of the same L#, but if the sourced natural population is large enough, we don't expect all the babies to look the same.

But of course, that's still not the same as someone crossing an L066 and an L236. As far as geographic variation, yes those become mutts I believe.

Cheers, Eric