Taxonomy & naming
Valencia robertae was described in 2014 by Jörg Freyhof, Hannah Kärst and Matthias F. Geiger, from a spring-fed site in the Epirus region of western Greece. The specific epithet robertae is a personal name honouring a woman associated with the species' discovery or documentation; the exact dedication was not confirmed from the sources consulted here — data sparse. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes lists Valencia robertae Freyhof, Kärst & Geiger, 2014 as a valid species within the family Valenciidae.
Valencia is a very small genus — now three species — that represents the last surviving remnant of a killifish lineage once distributed more broadly across the Mediterranean basin during the Pliocene and Pleistocene. Its closest living relatives, V. hispanica in eastern Spain and V. letourneuxi in Greece and Albania, are themselves both listed as globally threatened, making the genus as a whole one of the most conservation-critical lineages of European freshwater fish.
Morphology
As with its congeners, Valencia robertae is expected to be a small, robust-bodied killifish, typically reaching only a few centimetres in length, with a relatively unremarkable olive-brown to grey colouration compared to the more flamboyant killifish of Africa and South America. Detailed published morphometrics specific to V. robertae were not confidently available from the sources consulted here — data sparse, consistent with the very recent description and narrow specialist literature on this species.
Sexual dimorphism in Valencia generally is comparatively subtle relative to many other killifish genera, with males typically showing somewhat more colour in the fins than the plainer females, rather than the bold barring or bright body colour seen in genera such as Aphanius or Nothobranchius.
Habitat
Valencia robertae is known from a spring system in the Epirus region of western Greece, an area of karstic limestone springs and small streams that has produced a number of narrowly endemic aquatic species. As with its congeners, the species is presumed to favour cool, clear, well-vegetated spring water rather than the warm, often brackish habitats occupied by many Aphaniidae.
Given the extremely restricted known range typical of this genus — both V. hispanica and V. letourneuxi are similarly confined to small numbers of spring and stream sites — V. robertae's habitat is presumed to be similarly limited in extent, though the precise number of known localities was not confirmed here.
Feeding
No dedicated dietary study of Valencia robertae has been located. Valencia species generally are omnivorous, taking small aquatic invertebrates, insect larvae and some plant material and detritus from vegetated spring and stream habitat — a diet inferred here from the genus rather than confirmed directly for this species.
Mating
Courtship and spawning behaviour specific to Valencia robertae have not been documented in the sources consulted. Congeners are non-annual, substrate- and plant-spawners, depositing adhesive eggs among aquatic vegetation over an extended breeding season; this pattern is presumed, but not directly confirmed, for V. robertae.
Breeding
Published captive-breeding accounts specific to Valencia robertae are data sparse. Its better-documented relatives, V. hispanica and V. letourneuxi, are known to breed in captivity in cool, well-oxygenated, densely planted aquaria at moderate temperatures, consistent with their spring-fed native habitat; whether comparable husbandry has been successfully applied to V. robertae was not confirmed here.
In the aquarium
Valencia robertae is not part of the general aquarium trade and is known essentially only to specialist European-killifish conservation circles. Any captive maintenance of this species should be understood as part of an accountable ex-situ conservation effort given its extremely narrow known range, rather than as an ordinary hobby fish; general husbandry for the genus favours cool, clean, well-oxygenated, planted water rather than warm tropical conditions.
Conservation
The CARES Preservation Program lists Valencia robertae at the Critically Endangered (CCR) priority level, the most severe tier short of extinction in the wild. This reflects the pattern common to the entire genus: all three known Valencia species occupy extremely small ranges — often a handful of spring sites — and face similar threats from groundwater abstraction, spring-flow modification, agricultural runoff and the introduction of non-native fish such as mosquitofish (Gambusia spp.), which can rapidly outcompete or predate on small native killifish in an enclosed spring system.
Because the genus as a whole is so narrowly distributed, the loss of even one spring site can represent a substantial fraction of a species' entire global range. Habitat protection at known Valencia robertae localities, combined with accountable ex-situ breeding programmes, represents the most realistic path to the species' long-term survival.