I also think
is correct for the following reasons:
- has a conspicuous pale underbelly, whereas the other two species are relatively evenly pigmented along the flank and underbelly. Your fish appears to be rather dark on the sides and underbelly, so, not T. barthemi.
- From an older paper (Vari, R. P., & Ferraris Jr, C. J. (2006). The catfish genus Tetranematichthys (auchenipteridae). Copeia, 2006(2), 168-180.) which can be obtained here (https://bioone.org/journals/Copeia/volu ... 0.CO;2.pdf), their key for distinguishing T. wallacei from relies on (among other traits) a clear distinction in the distance from tip of snout to dorsal-fin origin relative to standard length (SL): 0.29–0.32 of SL for T. wallacei vs. 0.33–0.36 for T. quadrifilis (meaning the head of T. wallacei can be significantly shorter than, and is never longer than, that of T. quadrifilis).
I took one of your photos and did what all good scientists disdain - I attempted to perform loosey-goosey morphometrics from an uncontrolled photo of an unposed fish from an unorthodox angle!
I did so to make a coarse... and I mean COARSE... estimate of this ratio. It was relatively straighforward (and straight) to draw a line from tip of snout to origin of dorsal fin. What was more difficult was getting a reasonable estimate of SL, since your fish's body is bent and the camera angle is poor. But with that, I did my best and obtained a vague estimate of the ratio, which came out to be about 0.289, very close (considering the sloppy method) to the range for
T. wallacei and well outside of the range for
T. quadrifilis. If anything, I might have underestimated SL, which would drop your ratio even lower than the range accepted for
T. wallacei, but that would be for scientists to then figure out, right?
For comparison, I asked the question, "how short would the body need to be to obtain the minimum 0.33-0.36 ratio for
T. quadrifilis? I drew that on the photo too (green lines), in order to show just how different the body length would need to be in order to qualify this fish as
T. quadrifilis. Not even close!
Therefore, I conclude you have
.
As further confirmation, I checked my technique two ways:
- I went back to the Vari & Ferraris paper and extracted the photos for both T. quadrifilis and T. wallacei, to measure the same ratios and to show visually the shorter head of T. wallacei. See comparison photo below. My ratios for both species fall below the ranges in their paper, but even so, the relative proportions are obvious. I might be using the wrong landmark for origin of dorsal fin - I'm trying to estimate the first measurement from the anterior edge of the dorsal spine insertion. I discovered that if I used the posterior edge of the insertion of the dorsal spine on each fish, that would add 10 pixels to the first measurement for each fish, and in each species that would be sufficient to bump the ratios up to 0.29 and 0.33, respectively).
- I analyzed image 5 in the CLOG for T. wallacei to image 1 for T. quadrifilis and again obtained similar ratios.
Unrelate aside: I include here a photo from the Vari & Ferraris paper showing an scanning electron micrograph of the barbel of
T. wallacei.