Taxonomy & naming
Alticorpus sp. "Deep Bicuspid" is not a formally described species. It has no scientific name of its own, no describing author, no year of publication, and no entry in Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes. It belongs to Alticorpus, a genus of deep-water Lake Malawi cichlids erected by Jay Stauffer and Kenneth McKaye in 1988 around the type species Alticorpus mentale, and currently containing about six valid, formally described species (among them A. macrocleithrum, A. mentale, A. peterdaviesi, A. profundicola and A. geoffreyi), all confined to the deep, offshore, soft-bottomed water of the lake rather than the rocky shallows of the mbuna or the weedy margins of the shore-associated haps. This population is recorded from the Nkhotakota area on the central-western shore and is marked out in field references by depth as much as by dentition - "Deep" signals that it has been taken from notably deeper water than other bicuspid-toothed Alticorpus material recorded elsewhere in the lake. Because so many deep-water Alticorpus specimens taken by trawl cannot be confidently matched to a described species using external anatomy alone, field workers and trawl-survey literature have long grouped unassigned material by working characters such as outer-jaw tooth shape - unicuspid, bicuspid (two-pointed) or tricuspid - alongside locality and depth. Alticorpus sp. "Deep Bicuspid" is one such bicuspid-toothed, Nkhotakota-recorded population, recognised informally through the malawi.si database and Ad Konings's field surveys rather than through a taxonomic publication. Until a formal revision addresses the group, no authority or date should be attached to it.
Morphology
Alticorpus sp. "Deep Bicuspid" carries the genus-typical build: a fusiform, laterally compressed body of moderate depth, with the enlarged cranial sensory pores and widened lateral-line canals across the snout, cheek and lower jaw that define Alticorpus. Its outer-jaw teeth are bicuspid, ending in two points, the working dental character used across trawl-survey literature to sort otherwise similar deep-water specimens. No colour has been documented for this population; fish taken from the depths this form is reported from live almost entirely without daylight, and the genus as a whole shows little evidence of bright breeding dichromatism. No published measurements exist specific to it.
Habitat
Alticorpus sp. "Deep Bicuspid" is recorded from the Nkhotakota area on the central-western shore of Lake Malawi, and the qualifying name marks it as coming from notably deep water even by the standards of a genus that is already the lake's deep-water specialist. Genus-typical depth range for Alticorpus runs from roughly 59–492 ft, with most species living below about 197 ft; "Deep Bicuspid" is understood to sit toward the lower end of that range, over the soft sand and mud floor far from the rocky shallows. The overlying water is the warm, hard, alkaline chemistry typical of Lake Malawi generally, though at these depths cold, dim conditions and the approach to the lake's oxygen-limited deep layer matter far more to the fish than surface water chemistry.
Feeding
As with other deep Alticorpus, this form is presumed to be a benthic micro-feeder, using its array of enlarged head pores to sense small invertebrates moving in or on the sediment in water too dark for vision to be of much use. The genus generally occupies a low trophic level, feeding on detritus, diatoms and small invertebrates sifted from the soft floor rather than hunting other fish. No feeding study specific to this deep-recorded, bicuspid-toothed Nkhotakota population has been published; this account follows the documented genus pattern.
Mating
Courtship has never been observed in this form. Living at depths well beyond diving range, it is known only from trawl material, and its reproductive behaviour is inferred by analogy with the wider Lake Malawi haplochromine flock: presumed polygynous, with no pair bond, males holding and defending spawning sites on or near the deep floor while females move between them. The apparent lack of bright breeding colour fits a fish that spawns in water too dark for the visual courtship displays typical of shallow-water relatives.
Breeding
Alticorpus sp. "Deep Bicuspid" is treated as a maternal mouthbrooder, in keeping with its genus and the Malawi haplochromine radiation generally. The female is presumed to brood fertilised eggs orally through to free-swimming fry, producing a comparatively small number of large, well-provisioned young. No clutch data have been published for this specific, deep-recorded form. The better-studied congener Alticorpus macrocleithrum has been documented by South West Arm trawl work to spawn seasonally with clutches on the order of a hundred to a few hundred eggs, a plausible analogy that remains unconfirmed for this population.
In the aquarium
This is not an aquarium fish. Alticorpus sp. "Deep Bicuspid" is recorded from scientific trawl surveys working notably deep water, and the combination of cold, dark, high-pressure conditions at depth makes both capture and transport to the surface hard on the fish - deep-bodied cichlids from this depth range often do not survive the pressure change of a trawl haul. It plays essentially no role in the ornamental trade and is best understood as a record from the field-survey literature rather than a fish a keeper could realistically obtain or house.
Conservation
Alticorpus sp. "Deep Bicuspid" has not been evaluated by the IUCN. As an undescribed form it carries no Red List status of any kind, a statement about its taxonomy rather than its safety. As a deep, soft-bottom form of the central lake near Nkhotakota, it lies within reach of the demersal trawl fishery that targets Lake Malawi's offshore waters for food fish - a pressure that, unlike inshore net and hook-and-line fishing, bears directly on deep communities like this one, which are also the hardest part of the lake to survey and monitor. No conservation status beyond "not assessed" should be attached to it.