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Britto, MR, 2003. Phylogeny of the subfamily Corydoradinae Hoedeman, 1952 (Siluriformes : Callichthyidae), with a definition of its genera. Proceedings of the Avademy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 153: 119-154.

Corydoras is not found to be monophyletic, with C. barbatus, C macropterus, C. prionotus and an unnamed species found to be more closely related to Aspidoras, and placed in a separate genus (I think).

And what does that mean in plain English?

Cheers,

It means Corydoras as currently defined has been split into two (or more) genera.

Is the paper available as pdf?

Silurus wrote:It means Corydoras as currently defined has been split into two (or more) genera.

Goodness. As if we don't have enough confusion already.

Thanks!!!

Cheers,

So is Sceleromastyx (spelling?) finally coming into use?


This was discussed extensively well several year's ago! I don't recall when, where or by whom it was proposed. My understanding is that there just wasn't enought hard data to pull the trigger and create a defensible position at that time.

So is Sceleromastyx (spelling?) finally coming into use?

Yes, apparently Scleromystax is valid once more.

If a pdf file of this article is available I'm interested HH !!

Charly

If a pdf file of this article is available I'm interested HH !!

Me too

I'm also interested to read up more on such a piece of news.


Thanks

There are a few other tweaks to HH's information and I will be updating the cat-elog with the information soon, but this is a big change and affect several parts of the site, it will take time to do it right...

Jools

I will not be sending out any more copies of this paper. For anyone interested in obtaining a copy, please contact any one of the following forum members:
Achim (achim)
Ian (coryman)
Paul (pturley)

The resurection of Scleromystax by Britto has received the lion's share of the comments in this thread, but other items in his paper are also very interesting and of possible interest to the community herein. One of these is the placing of Brochis in synonomy with Corydoras. So, via Britto we now have some "new" Corydoras and no Brochis. What will be real interesting to see as time goes along is how the various clades (or groups) of Corydoras, as diagnosed by Britto, are handled. Britto notes a total of nine clades encompassing the Corydoras. One of these, in the paper, has been separated out as Scleromystax. That leaves eight groups, some of which are sub-grouped (plus many non so grouped Corydoras spp.that have currently unresolved problems) that Britto diagnoses as, at least in part, as being monophyletic. That would certainly suggest to me that we may well be seeing a large part of the genus Corydoras divided up into a number of genera in the future. It should be very interesting to follow the work of Britto (and possibly others).

Lee

I haven't read the paper carefully yet, mostly skimmed thru thus far but...

lfinley58 wrote:

One of these is the placing of Brochis in synonomy with Corydoras. So, via Britto we now have some "new" Corydoras and no Brochis.

If the Brochus are considered monophylitic with certain species of Corydoras in a separate grouping wouldn't the Genus name for that group be determined by the date of description? By which name has presidence?
I need to re-read the paper thoroughly tonight but depending on dates of scientific description could it just as likely be Brochus melanotaenia (one of the species so grouped) rather than Corydoras spendens. Again, I will be re-reading it tonight and will comment then.

By which name has presidence?

Corydoras Lacepède, 1803 has priority over Brochis Cope, 1871.

Hi Paul and all,

Paul: As you note there are certainly a number of points to be considered. My comments were based on Britto placing Brochis as a synonym of Corydoras and then making the assumption (there is that word) that he had checked out potential priority problems. The name Corydoras dates to 1803 and Brochis to 1871 (Eschmeyer, Catalog of Fishes). Based on this, and assuming (again) that Britto has all of his fishes in a row, it is easy to synonomize Brochis into Corydoras by priority. As I inferred in the post, I am sure there will be a lot of interesting things to come with this group.

Lee

Hi Heok Hee,

We must have been posting the dates at about the same time.

Lee

pturley wrote:

If the Brochus are considered monophylitic with certain species of Corydoras in a separate grouping wouldn't the Genus name for that group be determined by the date of description? By which name has presidence?

What I meant is that if the Genus Corydoras is considered polyphyletic (and thereby would be broken up) that the Genus name for the group (assuming it doesn't include the type species of the Genus Corydoras) would then go to the next Genus name within that monophylitic grouping that has priority. I don't recall from memory which species are included in the group that encorporates Brochis.

BTW: Apologies to everyone! Email certainly is killing the english language, at least in my writings anyways! Every time I re-read one of my own postings I cringe!

The problem with the analysis is that C. geoffroy (the type species) is not represented, so we do not know where it falls out. Also, given the large polytomy to which the clade containing all Brochis belongs, there isn't enough resolution in the cladogram to say more.

Hi Paul - I see, and know, what you mean. Been there, do that.
Heok Hee - Thanks for jumping in again with some good comments.

The group (clade) to which Britto assigns former Brochis spp. also includes C. aeneus, C. zygatus, C. rabauti and C. eques. Should future analysis further confirm and cement the monophyly of this group, it might appear (and Heok Hee, please forgive me here if I walk - or probably stumble - through the valley of the International Code regarding taxonomy - I may fear evil) that the oldest available name would be Hoplosoma, which was the original genus designation for C. aeneus (as H. aneum) which dates from 1858. I know I am getting ahead of things here, but this is just a little mental mas......ion on my account. Am I really off base here Heok Hee?

Lee

Could someone send me a copy of the paper, please?

I have just seen a preprint of a soon-to-be published work on the molecular phylogeny of the Callichthyidae. Interestingly, Corydoras also shows up as non-monophyletic, with some species being more closely related to Aspidoras. Details once the paper is published.

Just a general note here. I've left Brochis where it is for now as it's a heck of a lot of work to move it and I suspect we've not heard the last of work in this area in the short term. I have learnt the hard way that there is no point in moving it just to move it back a year later.

As a monophyletic genus, I have resurrected Scleromystax however and also made the following assumptions.

1. It also includes S. lacerdai. Harro still hasn't found time to send the type(s) to Brazil so they were not included in this paper.
2. The two "bristled c-numbers" (C112 and C113) are assumed to belong to Scleromystax too. Perhaps at least one of them will be described soon.

The whole shooting match is at .

Jools

[Mod Edit: Fix up link to Scleromystax and fix HTML style italics --Mats]