Oh ok, that’s good to know, about the dorsal. It’s crazy how much and how often they change. I have a Malawi cichlid encyclopedia from the 90s and it seems most of the names are all wrong now lol When I was in middle school, every new world cichlid was cichlasoma it seemed
They were. I have the Baensch Aquarium Atlas Vol. 1, 1st edition from 1987. Almost all CAs and a lot of northern SAs were in
Cichlasoma. There were a lot more species in the genus
Acara as well, which has been divided up as much as
Cichlasoma. At that time it was believed there were only three species of
Cichla (peacock basses) as well. Most of the Lake Malawi haps were in the genus
Cyrtocara and probably 90% of mbuna were in
Pseudotropheus. Most of the Tanganyikan substrate spawners were in
Lamprologus, as well as a large number of river dwelling species from Central and East Africa. Peacocks have mostly all stayed in
Aulonocara, but there were only a handful of species compared to today; now there are dozens. And there were dozens of species of East African cichlids just thrown in
Haplochromis.
Astatotilapia was just starting to absorb some of them. These were all just waste basket taxons where species were thrown as a general classification until furter refinement of their genus and species statuses could be narrowed down further. Times have changed.
WYite
