Re: [RML] Glossolepis pseudoincisus, Millenium or Tami River

Gary Lange (rainbowfish4u2 at yahoo.com)
Thu, 10 Nov 2005 07:34:20 -0800 (PST)

I think I remember Dan saying that there was a third lake that they found pseudoincisus also. Hopefully he'll get enough of a break with school this year that he'll be able to put together some of the info for an article in ANGFA. When one is just riding around for hours and hours in a van over really bumpy roads your sense of direction gets distorted. Lake Sentani is so huge so it seems like you always had to drive near it as you made your way to the other lakes. I'm hoping that we can get GPS spots on the other pseudoincisus lakes so that we can get an idea of how they line up and how close they actually are to the Tami river. Our new lake also contained tinfoil barbs. I'm guessing if the displaced Indonesians in this area tossed in tinfoil barbs that there were also snakeheads tossed in too. Doesn't look good for a lot of these lakes.
In the other direction (Hmm west?) is where we drove when we went to the G. dorityi lakes. We think that other lakes in that region should also contain G. dorityi but we'll have to wait until someone explores them. When taking off in the small aircraft from lake sentani we did note quite a few small crater-type lakes that might either contain doryityi, pseudoincisus or perhaps something in-between or even a new species. I think these little lakes, where ever they are in IJ or Papua are certainly worthwhile to seek out. Think of Parva, pseudoincisus, dorityi, all pretty, unique fish. I don't remember if M. herbertaxelrodi was also found somewhere other than Lake Tebera, or if that region was very accuractly searched, but if I were exploring and came across a small lake, far enough or elevated enough to be separated from the prevailing rivers I'd certainly check it out. On our flight from sentani to the Mamberambo/VanDalen river areas it was amazing how many rivers, lakes (not
just oxbows) and slivers of creeks we went over during an 1.5 hr flight. How many of those had still never seen a net, (with someone looking for rainbowfish) and how many might still yield a new species. Some of these are a long ways away from any village so I don't see someone flying in anytime soon to check it out. So much water, so little time...

Gary Lange

Christophe Mailliet <christophe.mailliet at web.de> wrote:

Hi Gary,

Thanks for this interesting information. So basically, you have extended the known range of G. pseudoincisus? Did you find it in other places around Lake Sentani?

It may appear odd that two such similar species live at very close range, and one could speculate that pseudoincisus and incisus may just be two variants or subspecies of one species. However when I wrote that article for Fishes of Sahul I had contact with Gerry Allen, who confirmed that Heiko Bleher's fish were indeed G. pseudoincisus and that it is a clearly distinct species from incisus (eg different pectoral fin counts, differences in scalation - irregular placement in incisus vs regular rows in pseudoincisus, and the like).

To me, incisus is very much like a pseudoincisus on steroids :-) It would be interesting to see what the genetics say?

Cheers

Christophe