Taxonomy & naming
Lambert's cory was described in 1986 by the Dutch ichthyologists Han Nijssen and Isaäc Isbrücker, the pair responsible for naming a large share of the South American armoured catfishes during the late twentieth century. They placed it in Corydoras Lacépède, 1803, the vast genus of callichthyid 'cory cats,' and there it has remained in the hobby and in most checklists ever since. The species epithet is an eponym: it honours Lambertus van Tuijl (1944–2012), a technician in the Department of Ichthyology at the Zoölogisch Museum in Amsterdam, where the describing authors were curators.
The genus Corydoras had long been recognised as an unwieldy, non-monophyletic assemblage of well over 170 species. In 2024 Dias, Tencatt and colleagues published a comprehensive phylogeny and revised classification of the Corydoradinae that split the old genus into several lineages — among them Brochis, Hoplisoma, Gastrodermus and Osteogaster. Under that scheme Corydoras lamberti falls within the resurrected, expanded genus Brochis, and the Catalog of Fishes and FishBase now list it as the valid combination Brochis lamberti. The change is recent and not yet universal in aquarium usage, so we keep the familiar Corydoras heading while recording the current placement honestly.
Morphology
This is a small cory, reaching only about 1.5 in in standard length — at the modest end of the genus. Like all members of the subfamily it is armoured rather than scaled: two longitudinal rows of overlapping bony plates (scutes) sheathe each flank, meeting along the back, and the head is encased in hard dermal bone. The mouth is small and ventral, fringed by three pairs of sensory barbels used to taste and probe the substrate, and the body is the typical stocky, high-backed, flat-bellied cory shape.
Detailed colour notes for wild fish are sparse in the literature, reflecting how little this species has been studied; published accounts and the catfish atlases describe a pale ground overlaid with darker mottling or spotting, in the manner of its western-Amazon relatives. As in other corys, the dorsal and pectoral fins are each armed with a stiff leading spine, a defensive structure that can deliver a sharp jab and tangle in a net. Reliable, measured accounts of sexual differences in this particular species are lacking.
Habitat
Corydoras lamberti is recorded from the Pastaza River basin, a western-Amazon tributary system draining the eastern Andean slopes and adjacent lowlands across the Ecuador–Peru border region. This places it among the headwater corys of the upper Amazon — fishes of clear to slightly turbid forest streams and their shallow margins rather than the main river channel.
FishBase characterises its environment in the broad terms typical for the genus: a tropical freshwater, demersal (bottom-associated) species tolerant of a pH band from about 6.0 to 8.0, soft to moderately hard water, and temperatures of roughly 72–79 °F. Like other callichthyids it is a facultative air-breather, able to gulp atmospheric air at the surface and absorb oxygen through a vascularised, modified hindgut — an adaptation that lets corys persist in warm, oxygen-poor shallows and stagnant pools where many fishes could not.
Feeding
No dedicated dietary study exists for this little-collected species, but its anatomy and its relatives leave little doubt: it is a benthic omnivore and detritivore. Corys of this kind work the bottom continuously, burying the snout and barbels in sand and leaf litter to taste out small invertebrates, insect larvae, micro-crustaceans, worms, fallen organic matter and the film of detritus that coats the substrate, sieving cleaned sand out through the gill openings. FishBase places the species at a trophic level of about 3.0, consistent with a small, opportunistic invertebrate-and-detritus feeder rather than any kind of specialist.
Mating
The reproductive behaviour of Corydoras lamberti has not been documented, but corys as a group share a remarkably uniform and well-studied courtship, and it is reasonable to expect this species to follow it. They are egg-laying shoalers without a pair bond. A ripe female cleans a spawning site, and a male takes up the characteristic 'T-position,' aligning himself at right angles to her head; she appears to take milt directly, sperm passing rapidly through her gut to fertilise the few eggs she clasps in a basket formed by her pelvic fins. She then carries that small batch to the cleaned surface and presses the adhesive eggs into place, the sequence repeating until the clutch is complete.
Breeding
There are no published accounts of Corydoras lamberti being bred in captivity, and the species is rare enough in the hobby that any spawning would be a specialist achievement. In the genus generally, spawning is typically triggered by a cool, large water change mimicking the onset of the rainy season; the adhesive eggs are deposited on firm surfaces in small batches, receive no parental care (adults will readily eat them), and hatch in a matter of days, after which the fry take microworm, baby brine shrimp and fine powdered foods. Whether the specific cues and clutch size for this headwater species match that template is simply unknown, and we will not invent figures it does not have.
In the aquarium
Corydoras lamberti is essentially a collector's fish rather than a community-store staple, but the husbandry that suits the genus would apply directly. It is a shoaling species and should be kept in a group of six or more; lone or paired corys are visibly stressed and inactive. A soft sand substrate is not optional decoration but a welfare requirement — corys feed by sifting, and sharp or coarse gravel abrades and infects their barbels, leaving the blunted, eroded faces that are a classic sign of poor husbandry.
Given its small size and headwater origins, this would be a fish for a well-planted, gently filtered tank with clean, well-oxygenated water, moderate temperatures around 72–79 °F, and peaceful tankmates such as small tetras and other quiet community fish — never anything large enough to bully it. The usual cory cautions hold: the fin spines catch easily in nets (a cup is safer), and a badly stressed cory can release a skin toxin that, in the confined volume of a bag or bucket, may kill the whole group, so transport demands care.
Conservation
The IUCN Red List assesses Corydoras lamberti as Least Concern (assessed 2014). The species occupies the Pastaza system of the western Amazon, a region of generally intact forest drainages, and it faces no identified species-specific threat. As with all narrowly known headwater fishes, that reassuring status rests on limited data: should its range prove genuinely restricted to a small portion of the Pastaza, localised pressures such as deforestation, mining run-off and the damming or pollution of Andean-piedmont streams could matter more than the broad assessment implies. For now, however, there is no evidence of decline.