Boraras merah
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This topic contains 8 replies, has 3 voices, and was last updated by Matt 7 years, 5 months ago.
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April 11, 2009 at 8:22 pm #300127QUOTE (Matt @ Apr 11 2009, 03:41 PM) < {POST_SNAPBACK}>– Boraras merah profile edited.
– Boraras micros profile edited.
– Boraras urophthalmoides profile added.I have recently heard a lot about B. merah actualyl being females of B. birgittae (and vice versa), do you know anything about this?
April 11, 2009 at 9:35 pm #313344I think this is worth its own thread Gustav hope you don’t mind.
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<p>I haven’t heard that theory but when I was writing the profiles I was thinking that it was weird how those two seem to have really restricted distributions that are so close to each other compared to all the others. *scratches chin*</p>
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April 11, 2009 at 11:16 pm #313345QUOTE (Matt @ Apr 11 2009, 11:18 PM) < {POST_SNAPBACK}>I think this is worth its own thread Gustav hope you don’t mind.” border=”0″ alt=”smile.gif” /> </p>
<p>I haven’t heard that theory but when I was writing the profiles I was thinking that it was weird how those two seem to have really restricted distributions that are so close to each other compared to all the others. *scratches chin*<!--QuoteEnd--></div>
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<p>I haven’t seen any scientific research on it but some state this is why B. brigittae has been considered so hard to breed, and why B. merah and B. brigittae usually come in together as “contaminants” for each other.</p>
<p>A guy on a swedish forum asked some experts on Rasboras if this could be true and they said it might just be the case, and that they would look into it further. Haven’t heard more about it though.</p>
<p>Edit: Now read that apparently there was an article in the latest Amazonas magazine (german fish magazine) about this, and they stated that B. brigittae are the males and B. merah the females.</p>
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April 12, 2009 at 10:23 am #313347Man I miss that magazine; stopped my subscription when I moved. Think Mick still gets it but he’s on holiday so we may have to wait ’til he gets back.
Edit – do we know anyone who has bred either species?
May 17, 2009 at 12:38 am #313854Gustav someone posted a pic of merah over at Petfrd so I’ve popped the question. Really interested to know about this.
May 17, 2009 at 6:51 pm #313870I’ve been meaning to write some stuff here but haven’t got around to do it. But the guy over at the swedish forum talked to a expert on Rasboras who works at the Swedish Museum of Natural History. And he said that he had done a morphological and a genetical analysis, and the result of this was that B. merah was not identical to B. brigittae, they aren’t even close relatives.
But they seem to think that more samples (dead fish from several locations) are needed to solve this problem.
However another person who works at the museum (not a scientist however) bought a group of merah and added them to his group of brigittae, and they soon got fry. He believes that what is sold as brigittae and merah is all merah, and that brigittae doesn’t show up in the trade.
The reason for this is that in 1988 there was an article in DATZ by Wilkerling and Weil where they write about how they went looking for B. brigittae in Borneo, Bandjarmasin (coordinates for Google Earth: -3.331739 114.599899). Eventually they brought home 25 B. brigittae that produced fry. The thing is though that the pictures in this article showed a fish where the males looked like the fish we call brigittae, but the females had a grey/pink colour with the long black band.
In 1991 Rasbora merah was described by Kottelat, with a type locality 30 miles south of Sukamara (-2.683333 111.216667). Thats about 40 miles from the type locality of B. brigittae. Kottelat also found B. merah about 8km south east of Anjungan (0.333333 109.133333). Thats 70 miles north west of Banjarmasin. On the type locality of B. merah he however finds both B. merah and B. brigittae, but because of Wilkerlings success at breeding B. brigittae he excludes the chance of them being the same species.
So in summary B. brigittae is only found at the very south of Borneo, in the west theres only merah, and in the south west there is both.
This doesn’t really help to solve this whole mystery, but it might give you some ideas. Obviously there is a lot of work that needs to be done.
Credit to Erik Åhlander at NRM for the information in this post.
May 18, 2009 at 2:40 pm #313877Cheers Gustav do you know if the fry from the merah/’brigittae‘ crossing exhibited both types of patterning?
May 18, 2009 at 4:44 pm #313878Don’t know Matt. Think he only got 2-3 fry as well.
May 2, 2012 at 1:28 pm #348065Does anyone know if the outcome of this was ever confirmed?
May 4, 2012 at 6:26 pm #318066I believe that the outcome was positive. Tomorrow I´m attending the Scandinavian killi societys Stockholm exhibit and I believe that one of the members bred merah and brigittae and got a mix. But I will ask him tomorrow and will get back to you. I think he knows Erik Åhlander as well.
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