Taxonomy & naming
Pao wesleywongi was published in 2026 by Davinci, Putra, Adis, Pranadi, Zamroni, Muslimin, Kamil and Yulindra in the Egyptian Journal of Aquatic Biology & Fisheries, describing material collected from Lake Singkarak, Tanah Datar Regency, West Sumatra, Indonesia, and cataloged only under a museum pre-catalogue number ("MZB pre-catalogue number ZO2026010009") rather than a formally accessioned holotype.
Catalog of Fishes (Eschmeyer, CAS) — the authority this site follows for valid names — records that no clear type specimen was fixed in the original publication, which under ICZN Article 72.3 renders the name unavailable, and lists its current status as a synonym of the genus Dichotomyctere, the Southeast Asian and brackish-tolerant puffer genus, rather than as a valid species of Pao. In other words, the describing authors proposed wesleywongi as a new species in Pao, but the authority this atlas relies on for taxonomic validity does not currently recognize it as a distinct species at all. We have not been able to consult the original paper directly (no online copy is available to us), so we cannot independently confirm or resolve this conflict — we can only report it accurately.
Morphology
We do not have access to the original paper's morphological description, and Catalog of Fishes' summary record for this name does not include measurements, coloration or diagnostic characters. We are not going to guess at what this fish looks like beyond what is documented.
Generally, Southeast Asian species of the genus Pao share a stocky, scaleless, spiny-skinned body typical of freshwater tetraodontids, with a small beak-like mouth formed from four fused tooth plates that grow continuously and require hard-shelled food to wear down — a family-level pattern, not a description of this specimen.
Habitat
The material studied in the 2026 description came from Lake Singkarak, a large natural lake in the Tanah Datar Regency of West Sumatra, Indonesia — the only locality documented for this name. No further habitat detail (depth, substrate, water chemistry) is available to us from the Catalog of Fishes record.
Lake Singkarak is a freshwater tectonic lake in the Sumatran highlands; beyond that general geographic fact, we have no species-specific habitat data to report.
Feeding
No feeding data specific to this name has been documented in the sources available to us. Genus-level, Pao species are molluscivores and durophages that crush hard-shelled prey such as freshwater snails and small crustaceans, wearing down their continuously growing beak in the process — a family/genus-level pattern stated here for context, not a confirmed observation of this taxon.
Mating
No mating behaviour has been documented for this name in the sources available to us. Genus-level, Pao puffers are understood to be solitary and territorial outside of spawning, without lasting pair bonds — a pattern reported for the genus generally, not observed for this specific taxon.
Breeding
No breeding data has been documented for this name in the sources available to us. Where breeding has been recorded in other Pao species, it typically follows a substrate-spawning pattern with paternal guarding of the clutch, but nothing of the kind has been reported for wesleywongi specifically, and given the unresolved taxonomic status of the name, we would be cautious about assuming it applies here.
In the aquarium
Pao wesleywongi is not documented in the aquarium trade, and given the unresolved question of whether it represents a distinct species at all, we would not encourage seeking it out under this name. Genus-level, Pao puffers are solitary, often aggressive predators that need a species-only setup, a diet of hard-shelled food to manage their continuously growing beak, robust filtration for their heavy waste load, and strict avoidance of copper-based medication because they are scaleless and lack true gill covers — general husbandry guidance for the genus, offered here for context rather than as species-specific advice.
Conservation
Pao wesleywongi has not been assessed by the IUCN Red List. Beyond that, its conservation status is difficult to even frame meaningfully while Catalog of Fishes treats the name as an unavailable synonym of Dichotomyctere rather than a distinct species — any assessment of "the species" would first require the taxonomic question to be resolved. Lake Singkarak itself is a single, geographically confined lake system, which would make any population confined to it inherently vulnerable to local pressures, but we have no documented information on threats specific to the fish described under this name.