Herichthys bartoni (Bean, 1892)

Mejía, Omar, Pérez-Miranda, Fabián, León-Romero, Yatzil, Soto-Galera, Eduardo & Luna, Efraín de, 2015, Morphometric variation of the Herichthys bartoni (Bean, 1892) species group (Teleostei: Cichlidae): How many species comprise H. labridens (Pellegrin, 1903)?, Neotropical Ichthyology 13 (1), pp. 61-76 : 65-68

Herichthys bartoni (Bean, 1892)

Acara bartoni Bean, 1892: 286-287 [original description].

Cichlasoma bartoni . -Meek, 1904: 211-212 [description]. - Miller, 1976 20 [citation]. -Taylor & Miller, 1983: 1-15 [citation]. - Miller et al., 2005: 299 [catalog].

Cichlosoma bartoni . - Regan, 1905: 445 [citation].

Herichthys bartoni . -León-Romero et al., 2012: 1021-1026 [phylogenetic analysis]. -De la Maza-Benignos & Lozano-Vilano, 2013: 119-120 [description].

Nosferatu bartoni . -De la Maza-Benignos et al., 2014: in press [citation].

Diagnosis. Herichthys bartoni can be distinguished from the rest of the species included in the H. labridens species group by a black-and-white to light gray coloration in live adult specimens.

Description. Morphometric and meristic data are summarized in Tables 3-4.

Color in life. Body white to light gray, with a series of blotches that extend from the opercle to the basis of the caudal fin. Dots in the head absent, with a red to purple axil mark at the pectoral fins.

Color in alcohol. Body dark brown to dark gray with black blotches, fins turn yellow to light brown.

Distribution. Laguna de la Media Luna and río Verde.

Remarks. Herichthys bartoni was described originally by Bean (1892) as Acara bartoni with four specimens from Hauzteca Potosina (= Huasteca Potosina). Bean states that the height of the body is contained 2.3 times in the standard length, the eye diameter is contained 4.5 to 5.5 times in the length of the head and twice in the length of the snout, the intraocular distance is 66% of the snout length and the length of the upper maxilla is 40% of the head length. These proportions are similar to those found in this study (2.2 to 2.7 times the height of the body, 3.1 to 5.1 and 0.81 to 2.0 for the eye diameter and 63% to 127% for the intraocular distance). The only exception was the 12% to 28% of the upper maxilla compared with the head length; in fact, none of the specimens reviewed in this study reached such proportions (the highest value was for one specimen of H. molango 35%), so we think that the Bean (1892) measurement was taken to the end of the maxillary bone and not to the joint with the lower maxilla, as we measured. Nevertheless, at least one of the specimens reviewed by Bean (1892) corresponded to a different species. Bean states that “In a specimen about 5 inches the cheeks and snout are profusely covered with minute roundish brown dots”, a character present in other species of the group but not in H. bartoni . The same situation seems to be true for the material described by Meek (1904). As noted by De la Maza-Benignos & Lozano-Vilano (2013) and Meek (1904) states that the sides of the head are covered with small dark dots but that in the eight specimens reviewed by Meek (1904), the number of anal spines was V, a trait observed in only 15% of the specimens of H. bartoni reviewed in this study. It is thus likely that the material reviewed by Bean (1892) and Meek (1904) could correspond to other species distributed in the Huasteca Potosina, such as H. pame or H. steindachneri , but not to H. labridens because the latter species lacks the dots on the head that occur on H. bartoni .

Material examined. Mexico: [Laguna de la Media Luna, SLP] ENCB-P P3880 (n=19) 57.6 to 111. 6 mm SL; [Manantial los Anteojos, Río Verde, SLP] ENCB-P P6108 (n=20) 54.0 to 118. 8 mm SL.