This species is most easily told apart from its only congener P. dayi by lacking (vs. possessing) two dark, irregular lateral stripes on the head and body, and a shorter caudal-fin in males.

The results of phylogenetic analyses by Rüber et al. (2006) suggest that Pseudosphromenus is most closely-related to Malpulutta in an evolutionary sense.

This species is euryhaline and mostly inhabits lowland, often coastal, habitats containing still or slow-moving brackish or freshwater.

It displays a preference for habitats with surface vegetation or overhanging cover and is commonly found in mangrove swamps and rice paddies.

Type locality is ‘Canara, southern India’, which corresponds to a coastal region of approximately 300 km in length covering several districts of Karnataka and Kerala states, southwestern India.

Rivers in this area drain the Western Gha…

Type locality is ‘Netravati River, Dharmasthala, Karnataka State, India’, with the species subsequently recorded from the Kabini (aka Kabani) River basin and it may be endemic to these two drainages.

While the Netraviti flows through Karnataka in its entirety before emptying into the Arabian Sea just south of the city of Mangalore, th…

D. assimilis has been misidentified as Puntius mahecola (Valenciennes 1844) in the past but the identity of both species was resolved by Pethioyagoda and Kottelat (2005 a, 2005b). They inspected the syntypes of P. mahecola and concluded that though valid it isn’t closely related to any Dawkinsia (then the Puntius filamentosus group) but is rather a smaller, silvery fish with a single dark blotch on the caudal peduncle, located entirely posterior to the anal-fin. It’s wi….

X. cancila is often seen referred to as ‘freshwater garfish’, and although it does superficially resemble the true gars of the family Lepisosteidae, it’s actually a member of the Belonidae, or needlefishes, the majority of which are marine or estuarine in existence.

There are currently just two species in the genus although the probable existence of a third member has been noted by Roberts (1989) among oth…

Etroplus is the only cichlid genus native to the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka and currently comprises three species among which E. canarensis is uniquely limited to freshwater and restricted in range.

Its congeners E. maculatus and E. suratensis are both euryhaline inhabiting estuaries, coastal lagoons and the lower reaches of rivers around coastlines of western and southern India plus northern Sri Lanka.

Wild examples are rarely-seen in the aquarium hobby although selectively-bred ornamental strains are widely-available for which care is identical.

These are normally traded as ‘red’ or ‘yellow’ chromide and have a solid yellow-orange colour pattern with no dark elements.

It exhibits a widespread sympatry with the con…

This species is euryhaline and mostly inhabits brackish estuaries, coastal lagoons and the lower reaches of rivers.

It also occurs in freshwater habitats, however, including a number of inland lakes in Sri Lanka although it appears to have been introduced intentionally.