Commonly known as ‘Japanese rice fish’ or simply ‘rice fish’, O. latipes is well-known to science having been widely used as a model organism in genomic and experimental biology for well over a century and was the first vertebrate animal to mate in space during the mid-1990s.

It’s also been a popular aquarium fish for many years, though is less widely-available than it once was, with the ornamental ‘gold’ vari…

L. disparis is sometimes available as bycatch among shipments of other species such as Rhinogobius duospilus but also appears on trade lists under the fictitious scientific name ‘Homaloptera hoffmani’.

It can be told apart from similar-looking members of the genus Formosania by its noticeably shorter barbels and from Vanmanenia spp. by the fact that the rostral fold is not lobed and the mouth is relatively small (25% head width. In addition the lower lip in Liniparhomaloptera is not divided and has a flat, papillated edge.