> We, in the hobby of native fish keeping, have always felt that the South
> Alligator fish were very different and spectacular - different body shape
> and even behave a bit different too. In fact in some ways behave more like
> a trifasciata - prefer moving water, less flighty, keep their colour
> better etc , all little things.
One could say that about a number of rainbowfish populations in Australia.
:-) The few enzymes we looked at in Burdekin rainbows didn't show up anything
unusual, although Mark Adams at the South Australian Museum will at some point
have a very thorough look at many many enzyme systems which should somewhat
resolve these questions much better than we can now.
> However my recollection of Taylor's "Melanotaenia solata" was that the fish
> came from Yirrkala and Groote Eylant which of course are locations to the
> far east of Arnhemland, in fact as far away as it is possible to get from
> the East Alligator River.
That was where they were first described from. I think Jerry was just making
that assumption that they might be related or similar. Given solata have been
described it would be necessary to figure out their identity relative to other
populations in that area due to taxonomic naming priorities. They would indeed
be very interesting to look at, but at this stage I am not willing to do the
paper and leg work necessary to even begin to try and get them from the wild.
There are many interesting fishes from that region. The biogeographic
boundary between western C. stercusmuscarum and Gulf of Carpentaria C.
stercusmuscarum clades (http://www.peter.unmack.net/biogeog/clades) lies somewhere
in this region. Blyth River is the western form, Roper River is the Gulf
form. Don't have anything from inbetween. Interesting that the biogeographic
break in this region is different in Craterocephalus and Melanotaenia.
> Peter, if you get permission to go collecting in Arnhemland it will be
> important to try to get some of the tris from Yirrkala which resemble M.
> monticola or M. oktediensis more than a tri.
We could easily examine a couple of captive specimens to determine that to a
fair extent. Just need someone willing to sacrifice a couple. :-)
Cheers
Peter