Taxonomy & naming
Lethrinops sp. "Auritus Lion" has no scientific description, no authority, and no FishBase entry — the quoted name is a field label coined by Ad Konings after finding a single male at Lion's Cove and is not a valid binomial. It was initially difficult to place: in the field the male's colouration looked more like a Nyassachromis than a Lethrinops, and only after Konings watched it feeding — working the sand with the angled, protrusible mouth typical of the genus — did its identity as a Lethrinops become clear. The "auritus" half of the trade name references Lethrinops auritus, a small, well-documented bower-building species from shallow muddy bays; "Auritus Lion" is not a claim that the two are the same species, but a comparison, since both build elaborate sand-and-mud display mounds, a trait shared by only a handful of Lethrinops. Whether this population represents one geographically restricted species or a wider-ranging one recorded only once cannot be resolved from a single specimen.
Morphology
No formal measurements exist for this form; the only physical record is a single photographed male. Konings described its colouration as attractive and distinct from other known Lethrinops, closer at a glance to a Nyassachromis than to typical genus members — though no specific colour description beyond that comparison has been published, and this account does not go further than what was actually reported. Body shape is presumed genus-typical: elongated and fusiform, with the oblique, protrusible sand-sifting mouth diagnostic of Lethrinops, which is in fact what led to its correct identification in the field. No female has ever been documented, so nothing is known of non-breeding or female colouration.
Habitat
The only confirmed record is Lion's Cove, a narrow bay where the single male was found on open sand at approximately 25 metres depth — deep enough, combined with the bay's narrow shape, that direct sunlight reportedly does not reach the bottom there until around midday. This puts the form well below the depth typical of shallow bower-building Lethrinops such as L. auritus, which favours water only 2–5 metres deep, suggesting "Auritus Lion" occupies a distinctly deeper sand habitat. Water conditions at that depth follow Lake Malawi's typical profile: warm, hard, and alkaline, though cooler and dimmer than the shallows. No other locality has been reported for this form.
Feeding
The single documented male was observed feeding directly from the sand — the behaviour that ultimately confirmed its identity as a Lethrinops rather than a Nyassachromis. This is consistent with the sand-sifting invertivory typical of the genus: taking mouthfuls of substrate, straining out small invertebrates such as chironomid larvae, ostracods and copepods through the gill rakers, and expelling the spent sand. No further detail on diet composition or feeding frequency has been recorded for this form.
Mating
The one observed male had built and was maintaining a display territory on open sand at his 25-metre site, in the manner typical of lekking, bower-building Lethrinops: no pair bond, with the male's construction serving to attract passing females rather than a fixed nest for a mated pair. Whether other males of the same population build similar structures, and how females choose among them, was not confirmed — Konings noted explicitly that he could not verify whether the behaviour he photographed was representative, since only the single male was found.
Breeding
The male's bower consisted of several heaps of sand roughly 6 in tall, spaced 19.5–31.5 in apart, but not arranged in a circle — a clear structural difference from the true Lethrinops auritus bower, which forms a closed ring of mud-and-sand heaps around a raised central cone that serves as the actual spawning dish. "Auritus Lion"'s mound lacked that central spawning cone entirely. Like other Lethrinops, the species is presumed to be a maternal mouthbrooder, with the female taking fertilised eggs into her mouth at the male's display site and incubating them alone; but this has not been directly observed for this form, and clutch size and brooding duration are undocumented.
In the aquarium
Lethrinops sp. "Auritus Lion" has never been reported in the aquarium trade; it is known from a single wild photograph, not from exported or bred stock, and no husbandry information exists. Speculating about tank requirements beyond genus-typical Lethrinops practice — soft sand for sifting, hard alkaline water around 75–82 °F and pH 7.7–8.6, and a peaceful community setup relative to rock-dwelling mbuna — would not be grounded in any actual experience with this form, so none is offered here beyond that general baseline.
Conservation
No IUCN Red List assessment exists for Lethrinops sp. "Auritus Lion", and none is possible without a formal description. With only a single individual ever documented, at one site, in 1995, there is effectively no population or distribution data to assess: it is not known whether the form is common and simply under-recorded because of its depth, or genuinely rare. Deep sand habitats in Lake Malawi generally face less direct pressure from shoreline development than the shallows, but are still exposed to inshore trawling and seine-net fisheries that take sand-associated haplochromines as incidental bycatch.