Known from minor rivers in the coastal states of São Paolo, Paraná, and Santa Catarina, southern Brazil, plus some tributaries of the rio Paraná basin in Paraguay.

Type locality is ‘Paranaguá, 25°32’S, 48°36’W, Paraná, Brazil’.

S. pappaterra is relatively rare in the ornamental trade and much sought after by enthusiasts.

It is easily distinguished from all known congeners by presence of a series of prominent black blotches beneath the dorsal-fin, plus a well-defined dark band extending along the side of the body. In recent genetic analyses its genetic distinctness was strongly supported, with S. jurupari and S. leucosticta its closest relatives.

A. taurus can be told apart from congeners by the following combination of characters: infraorbitals and preopercle covered by thick skin and not visible externally (vs. covered by thin skin and externally visible in other Aspidoras); nuchal plate reduced, covered by thick skin and not visible externally (vs. well developed, covered by thin skin and visible externally); lateral line absent posterior to two small lateral line ossicles (vs. lateral line present on at least first body plate).

This species has been traded as ‘six-eyed tetra’ in reference to its colour pattern comprising two dark spots on each flank plus the eye.

Based on the extensive review of the genus by Lucena and Malabarba (2010), in which nine new species were described, P. tegatus can be told apart from congeners by the following combination of characters: lateral line incomplete with 8-13 perforated scales; laterally elongate humera…

A paternal ‘lip brooder’ which has been bred in aquaria.

Post-spawning the male carries the eggs attached to his labial barbels for a period of 12-14 days after which the fry hatch with a large yolk sac attached, this being absorbed over the next 48 hours or so.

During incubation the behaviour of the male i…

Brochis was first synonymised with Corydoras by Britto (2003), since the latter genus cannot be considered monophyletic if the former is accepted as valid. This decision has been supported in subsequent phylogenetic studies by Shimabukuro-Dias et al. (2004) and Alexandrou et al. (2011), although the name Brochis is still common in aquarium literature. It is likely that the genus will be revalidated and expanded in the future following a required taxonomic review of the subfamily Corydoradinae as suggested by Alexandrou and Taylor (2011).

Type locality is given simply as ‘Amazon River, Brazil’ and according to current thinking this species has a huge natural range encompassing the Amazon River system in Brazil and Peru plus the Paraná-Paraguay drainage in southern Brazil and Paraguay and rio São Francisco basin in southern Brazil.

Specimens in our images were collected fro…

C. aurofrenatus is currently understood to occur throughout much of the Río Paraguay-Paraná system in Paraguay, and has also been recorded in Argentina and Bolivia.

It was described from Paraguay with type locality given as ‘Aguada near Arroyo Trementina’. The latter is stated to be a tributary of the ‘Rio Aquido Canigi’.

This species was formerly considered to be represented by the L-numbers L113 and L234 but it appears that only the former is native to the Paraná, Paraguay and Uruguay drainages, whereas L234 is collected in the rio São Francisco in eastern Brazil.

M. barrae and M. sp. ‘LDA097’ are also exported from the São Francisco system.

This species is sometimes confused with unidentified fishes such as A. sp. ‘L352’.

It can be told apart from closely-related congeners by possession of relatively long maxillary barbels which are free from the lower lip, and a colour pattern consisting of small spots on the head and vermiform lines on the body in males, and small spots all over the head and body in females.