Aquarist Atlas · the bichirs & ropefish

Every bichir on one map

711 georeferenced records across 14 species, drawn across the fresh waters of Africa — the only continent where the Polypteridae live. They range from the West African coastal rivers and the Nile, east to Lakes Chad and Turkana, and south through the vast Congo basin. Colour the cloud by group — the cylindrical bichirs (Polypterus) and the eel-like ropefish (Erpetoichthys) — or switch to compare mode and read two species’ ranges against each other.

© Adobe Stock

About this map. Scroll or pinch to zoom, drag to pan, and click a dot to identify the species. The 711 dots are real occurrence records pulled from GBIF, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility — an aggregator of museum specimens, scientific surveys and verified citizen-science sightings. Treat them as a guide to where a species lives, not exact spots: many records are georeferenced to a locality centroid (a nearby town or river mouth) rather than the precise catch site, some are historical or low-precision, and the occasional point may be a misidentification — several bichirs are hard to tell apart and were long confused. Some species have few public records — a sparse map is honest, not an error. No coordinates are invented.

← Browse the Bichirs & Ropefish index