Pterygoplichthys zuliaensis Weber 1991

Orfinger, Alexander Benjamin & Goodding, Daniel Douglas, 2018, The Global Invasion of the Suckermouth Armored Catfish Genus Pterygoplichthys (Siluriformes: Loricariidae): Annotated List of Species, Distributional Summary, and Assessment of Impacts, Zoological Studies 57 (7), pp. 1-16 : 6-8

Pterygoplichthys zuliaensis Weber 1991

Pterygoplichthys zuliaensis Weber 1991: 638 . Type locality: Río Santa Ana, bassin du Maracaibo, Hacienda Río Grande, 9°36'20"N, 72°07'00"W, état de Zulia, Venezuela. Holotype: MBUCV V-14653; holotype illustrated in Weber (1992:pl. 4b).

Native Distribution: Lake Maracaibo basin, Venezuela ( Weber 2003).

Distributional Summary

The summary table of all records for introduced Pterygoplichthys spp. through June 1, 2017 along with relevant remarks is provided in Appendix 1. We included seventy-one unique records. Seven introduced species or hybrids of the genus Pterygoplichthys have been reported from five continents, plus an extended range in their native South America, and twenty-one countries ( Fig. 1 ).

Of these, fifteen records involve detections (i.e. species present but whose establishment status is unknown) and fifty-five instances are established (i.e. reproducing) populations. A single successful eradication of a previously established population of P. disjunctivus is reported from the Rainbow River, Florida, USA ( Hill and Sowards 2015). The most abundant established populations are those of P. disjunctivus and P. pardalis (n = 22 each), followed by P. multiradiatus (n = 5), P. ambrosetti (n = 4), and likely hybrids of P. disjunctivus x pardalis (n = 2) ( Table 3).

The first established population was reported from Florida, USA in the late 1950s ( Fuller et al. 1999). Since 1985, the number of both detected and established reports in the literature has rapidly risen ( Fig. 2 ). The summarized data will be deposited online through GBIF.

Generic Impact Scoring System (GISS)

Our literature survey produced twenty-one papers providing evidence on the impacts of Pterygoplichthys spp. in their nonnative ranges. In table 4, we provide detailed justifications for scores along with references used to calculate the GISS. The six environmental categories yielded a score of 11-12 (of a possible 30), while the four socioeconomic categories evaluated yielded a score of 7 (of a possible 20), resulting in a cumulative GISS of 18-19 (of a possible 50) for the genus.

Figures

Fig. 1. Global distribution of nonnative Pterygoplichthys spp. represented with filled-in geopolitical polygons for established populations, filled-in circles for potentially isolated detections, and a circle with a red X over it for the single eradication. Each species is represented by a different color. Geopolitical areas with multiple established species are displayed with a multicolor pattern using the relevant species’ colors. The Gulf Coast/Caribbean region and central Indo-Pacific region are represented in higher resolution map insets with red and yellow borders, respectively. Color-filled polygons (e.g. states) indicate establishment in, but not necessarily throughout, an area.

Fig. 2. Number of exotic records of Pterygoplichthys spp. by year recorded in the literature. Records with missing dates were treated using the publication date and the single record of “late 1950s” was treated as 1960. A total of 71 records of exotic Pterygoplichthys spp., either individuals or populations, were reported through October, 2017; 55 of these records represented established populations.