Copadichromis insularis "Maleri Island"
Maleri Island — mah-LEH-ree EYE-land (approx.)
The fish
How this cichlid is built, and everything about how it lives, eats and breeds, is shared with the species — this page doesn't repeat it.
Read the full Copadichromis insularis account →Specific to Maleri Island
- Collection locality & coordinates
- Local coloration — best judged from the living-fish photo
- Kept as a single-provenance line, never crossed with other collection points
Care facts below are the species' — shared with Copadichromis insularis.
The Maleri Island population
Copadichromis insularis "Maleri Island" is the Maleri Island population of Copadichromis insularis, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the southern part of the lake. It is the same species as Copadichromis insularis, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Maleri Island fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Copadichromis insularis is a small, plankton-feeding haplochromine cichlid endemic to a handful of islands in the southern half of Lake Malawi. Its name says it plainly — "of islands" — for every known population hugs the sand-and-rock fringes of the Maleri group and the Chinyankwazi and Chinyamwezi islets rather than the mainland shore. It is a textbook utaka: females and quiet males drift in small groups a metre or two above the bottom, picking individual zooplankters out of the open water, while territorial males drop down to build spawning bowls beneath flat rocks. Described only in 2006, it is one of the more recently recognised members of the lake's three-spotted utaka radiation, separated from its near-twins by the precise geometry of three body spots and a breeding-male wardrobe of blue breast and white-edged dorsal fin.
Full Copadichromis insularis account →Sources
- malawi.si — Copadichromis insularis "Maleri Island"
- Catalog of Fishes (Eschmeyer) — Copadichromis insularis (species record, authority)
- FishBase — Copadichromis insularis summary
- malawi.si — Copadichromis insularis 'Maleri Island' (Gregor Bauer / M.K. Oliver database; photo © Ricky Ward)
- Stauffer, J.R. & Konings, A. 2006. Review of Copadichromis (Teleostei: Cichlidae) with the description of a new genus and six new species. Ichthyol. Explor. Freshwat. 17(1): 9–42 (original description)
- malawi.si — Chinyankwazi Island (type-locality location & GPS)