Corydoras leucomelas

[Manoah]

Hello everyone!, i have a group of corydoras leucomelas that i bought. They where sold as corydoras punctatus but they look more like leucomelas. But i bought them for my venezuela biotope becouse i thought they where punctatus. My question for you all is: do you know any reports from corydoras leucomelas in venezuela or columbia? or is it posible that they live there?

[Jools]

Not Venezuela, but Colombia yes (area around Leticia). That said, Amazon flooded forest biotope - not Orinoco or her tributaries.

Also, C. punctatus isn't Venezuelan either?

Jools

[bekateen]

Here's the distribution of Corydoras(ln9) leucomelas records on file at GBIF.org. Definitely in Colombia, and one record is along the Rio Irindiri, close to the Atabapo and Orinoco.

Cheers, Eric

[Jools]

That one record (https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/620801135) looks a bit odd. Would love to have seen the fish.

IIRC, a synonym of C. leucomelas is found in the Orinoco, but pretty sure it's not exported. Will check when I get time.

Jools

[bekateen]

IIRC, a synonym of C. leucomelas is found in the Orinoco, but pretty sure it's not exported. Will check when I get time.

Jools

Corydoras(ln9) sp(cw115) or Corydoras(ln9) sp(c079)? Not Orinoco but in the drainage.

Cheers, Eric

[Manoah]

Not Venezuela, but Colombia yes (area around Leticia). That said, Amazon flooded forest biotope - not Orinoco or her tributaries.

Also, C. punctatus isn't Venezuelan either?

Jools

thanks you

[Manoah]

Here's the distribution of Corydoras(ln9) leucomelas records on file at GBIF.org. Definitely in Colombia, and one record is along the Rio Irindiri, close to the Atabapo and Orinoco.

Cheers, Eric

Thank you eric

[bekateen]

CW027, also Colombian, is similar.

Cheers, Eric

[Shane]

"Would love to have seen the fish."

Well, it's apparently in a jar in Frankfurt lol.

The hard part with distribution info is that using any data but the holotype location from the description introduces lots of false information. I have stacks of "Fishes of...." papers full of bad identifications. In all fairness, the survey teams rarely (if ever) have a full compliment of specialists. You might have a cichlid person, a killie person, and a tetra person in which case every identification outside those specialty areas is full of mistakes.

If we all conducted a survey the siluriformes section would be spot on but cyprinid section might be a lot weaker...

-Shane

[Manoah]

Thanks shane!

[Jools]

The hard part with distribution info is that using any data but the holotype location from the description introduces lots of false information. I have stacks of "Fishes of...." papers full of bad identifications. In all fairness, the survey teams rarely (if ever) have a full compliment of specialists. You might have a cichlid person, a killie person, and a tetra person in which case every identification outside those specialty areas is full of mistakes.

All true and why PlanetCatfish maps show the holotype with a star in the pin.

Apologies to the OP for half off-topic chat, but useful to further talk about this - perhaps because I spent all data yesterday with data scientists and learned that some data gives you facts, but most data gives you trends and the devil is in the interpretation. Holotype is a fact, occurrence data gives you trends. In the case of Corydoras leucomelas in Colombia, the data is telling us that something that looks like this species, but probably isn't, is present in Colombia and that C. leucomelas is an upper Amazon species. But you have to be really rather familiar with the topic to figure this out.

Anyway, what I wanted to explore about occurrence data is that in addition to the knowledge and skill of those identifying it, the ID is also based on the wider situation of the taxon at that point in time.

Imagine that in the future, Corydoras aeneus is split into, for example, ten new species with C. aeneus restricted to an island in the Caribbean. Who, thereafter, is going back to all the occurrence data across the continent and assigning it to the new taxa?

Similarly, consider when species A is made a junior synonym of species B, then twenty years worth of occurrence data is ascribed to species A. Then more research is done and, surprise surprise, species B turns out to be a valid species (again). Who goes back and works out what happens to that twenty years of occurrence data?

The collection voucher system is capable of being manipulated in this way, and AI can be used to identify "dodgy" occurrence data. But humans would need to revisit the data in these types of scenarios. Hard yards even if you are doing very focused work on one species.

Jools

[Shane]

@jools All super valid points and hard yards indeed.
-Shane

[Manoah]

Thanks jools en shane your help means a lot to me.

-Manoah