New fish is named after Batman
Otocinclus batmani is named after the Caped Crusader of Gotham City.
Holy mackerel - a taxonomist has named a new species of catfish after the caped crusader, Batman.The new loricariid catfish is a member of the hypoptopomatine genus Otocinclus and has a dark marking on its tail resembling the Batman logo.
Ichthyologist Pablo Lehmann, of the Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio Grande do Sul, has named the species Otocinclus batmani in a paper in the current volume of the journal Neotropical Ichthyology.
"The name batmani, alludes to Bob Kane's hero Batman of the comic adventures, which had a bat shape for his symbol, referring to the single W- or bat-shaped vertical spot on the caudal fin", wrote Lehmann.
"The new species is distinguished from all other Otocinclus, except O. cocama [known in the aquarium trade as the Zebra otocinclus], by having a single, intensely pigmented, vertical W-shaped caudal fin spot, and by having three discrete dark bands on the dorsum, between the dorsal-fin base and the caudal fin.
"Otocinclus batmani differs from the O. cocama by the absence of vertically elongated blotches from the dorsal midline to the ventral border of flanks, and by lacking the posterior extension of black pigmentation on the base of two central caudal-fin rays."
The new species was discovered from the Rio Pure in Colombia and two creeks draining into the Rio Amazonas near Iquitos in Peru. Like other members of the genus, this species is small, with most of the type specimens collected measuring just under 4cm long.
Lehmann believes that Otocinclus batmani is a member of Schaefer's clade B of Otocinclus, which originally included O. bororo, O. mariae, O. mura and O. huaorani - all of which have 20 or more teeth on the premaxilla.
The species is the second fish to be named after Batman. The first was a goby from the west central Pacific, which was named Batman insignitus by Whitley in 1956. It has subsequently been moved to the Cryptocentrus genus and is now called C. insignitus.
For more information see the paper: Lehmann, PA (2006) - Otocinclus batmani, a new species of hypoptopomatine catfish (Siluriformes: Loricariidae) from Colombia and Peru. Neotropical Ichthyology, 4(4): 379-383, 2006.
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Matt Clarke: 8.1.2007Views: Read 32,625 times
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Reader comment
Date: Tuesday January 16th, 2007, 2:02 pm
"hope it does not fly off"
Posted by: Kit Morrison - 2 years, 10 months agoDate: Tuesday January 16th, 2007, 2:02 pm
Reader comment
Date: Tuesday January 16th, 2007, 4:29 pm
"If you look at the top photo @ the "above view"... just infront of its dorsal-fin is the letter R..
might be abit more appropriate to call this 1 "Robin" hahaha
Nice Fish though, will be looking out for this 1 when it reaches the UK"
Date: Tuesday January 16th, 2007, 4:29 pm
Reader comment
Date: Wednesday January 17th, 2007, 9:28 pm
"to the bat tank robin"
Posted by: Keith Pates - 2 years, 10 months agoDate: Wednesday January 17th, 2007, 9:28 pm
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 | Editor-in-Chief, Matt Clarke, writes the regular Interesting Imports column on rare and unusual fish in the UK aquarium trade. He's kept fish for 30 years and holds a degree, two higher degrees and two diplomas in fish biology, taxonomy and computational biology. |
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"Wouldn't it be great if all scientific names had a tag like this that could be reflected in the fish's common name. The common name - say the Batman otocinclus would make the scientific name easy to remember and recognise. Too obvious I fear... "
Posted by: Steve Windsor - 2 years, 10 months agoDate: Wednesday January 10th, 2007, 1:38 pm