Taxonomy & naming
The fish was described by the American ichthyologist Carl L. Hubbs in 1935 as Cichlasoma urophthalmus trispilum — explicitly as a subspecies of the Mayan cichlid — in a Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan paper. The type material came from the Río San Pedro de Mártir, a tributary of the Río Usumacinta, at El Paso de los Caballos in the Petén department of northern Guatemala; the holotype (UMMZ 95520) and three paratypes are held at the University of Michigan. The epithet trispilum, from Greek roots meaning 'three-spotted,' refers to the flank marking Hubbs used to distinguish it. Its taxonomic history is more checkered than most of its relatives: where the other Hubbs forms were generally carried as full species in the genus Cichlasoma, trispilum was for decades treated as a straight synonym of Cichlasoma urophthalmus — Kullander (2003) and Page & Burr (2011) both listed it that way. The 2016 revision of Middle American cichlids by Říčan, Piálek, Dragová & Novák erected the genus Mayaheros and revived trispilus as a distinct species within it, and the Catalog of Fishes (Fricke, Eschmeyer & Van der Laan) now lists it as the valid Mayaheros trispilus (Hubbs 1935). As with the other revived urophthalmus-group names, that validity rests on the original morphological diagnosis rather than a modern molecular re-test, and the Yucatán-focused work of Mejía and colleagues (Copeia 2018) — which found the named forms to be phenotypic variants of one lineage — leaves the rank of trispilus genuinely open.
Morphology
Mayaheros trispilus is a modest heroine cichlid of the Mayan-cichlid mould — somewhat smaller than the robust 12 in-plus Mayaheros urophthalmus, with the same oval, laterally compressed body and brassy-tan to olive ground colour overlaid by lateral barring and dark flank markings. The diagnostic group feature is the conspicuous ocellus — a black, pale-ringed eyespot — high on the caudal peduncle, the 'tail-eye' (Greek oura + ophthalmos) that gives the parent species its name urophthalmus. The epithet trispilus points to Hubbs's own diagnostic character: a pattern of dark spots or blotches on the flank, expressed alongside the several vertical bars that cross the body and can be flashed or suppressed with mood. Sexual dimorphism is slight throughout the genus: males average a little larger and develop somewhat longer dorsal- and anal-fin tips, while ripe females are deeper-bellied, with no dramatic colour difference. Because trispilus has scarcely been studied apart from its original description and its long stint as a synonym, fine meristic and colour detail beyond the group-typical pattern is not well documented; the characters Hubbs relied on fall within the broad range of variation that later workers attribute to a single plastic species.
Habitat
The species is known from the Petén lowlands of northern Guatemala, in the Río San Pedro de Mártir and the wider Usumacinta drainage on the Atlantic slope. This is a lowland, warm-water river-and-floodplain habitat — slow-to-moderate blackwater and whitewater reaches, oxbows, lagoons and seasonally inundated margins typical of the Petén, very different from the cenote and island habitats of some of its relatives. Like the rest of the Mayan-cichlid group, trispilus is a euryhaline generalist tolerant of a wide chemical range; the broader group spans fresh through brackish to nearly marine conditions, though the Petén populations live in fresh river water. The Río San Pedro flows through karst and lowland rainforest, and its water is warm (commonly mid-to-upper 20s °C), with hardness and pH reflecting the limestone substrate of the region (generally neutral-to-alkaline and moderately hard). Seasonal flooding drives the rhythm of the habitat, expanding the fish's range across the floodplain in the wet season and concentrating it in permanent channels and lagoons in the dry. Its distribution overlaps broadly with typical urophthalmus, which is one reason its distinctness has been so hard to settle.
Feeding
No dedicated diet study exists for Mayaheros trispilus, but its membership in the Mayan-cichlid group places it among opportunistic omnivores with a carnivorous lean. Mayaheros urophthalmus, the best-studied member, is a generalist predator-omnivore taking small fish, crustaceans, aquatic and terrestrial insects, snails, detritus and some plant material, shifting its diet readily with what each habitat offers — a flexibility that underlies the group's success. In a Petén river-and-floodplain system, trispilus would work the bottom and vegetated margins for insect larvae, microcrustaceans, snails and organic debris, taking small fish and terrestrial invertebrates that fall onto the water, and exploiting the flush of food the wet-season flood brings to the inundated forest floor. The robust heroine jaw and pharyngeal mill suit a mixed diet that includes hard-shelled prey such as snails. Trophically the group sits in the mid-range of the food web as a flexible secondary consumer.
Mating
Reproductive behaviour has not been documented specifically for Mayaheros trispilus, but the Mayan-cichlid group is uniformly biparental and strongly territorial when breeding. In Mayaheros urophthalmus, pairs form a monogamous bond, clear and defend a substrate territory, and become markedly aggressive toward intruders during courtship and brood care; spawning is timed to the warm wet season when temperatures are reliably above about 75 °F and food is abundant. A pair courts with lateral displays, fin-spreading and substrate-cleaning over a chosen surface. There is every reason to expect trispilus follows the same template — a monogamous pair holding and defending a territory — and in its seasonal floodplain habitat breeding would be tightly coupled to the wet-season rise, when warm water and a flush of food across the inundated margins favour rapid fry growth.
Breeding
As with mating, breeding is undocumented for Mayaheros trispilus itself and is inferred from the group. Mayan cichlids are open substrate spawners: the pair lays adhesive eggs in rows on a cleaned hard surface — a flat stone, root, submerged log, or firm patch of substrate — and both parents guard the clutch, fanning the eggs and later shepherding the free-swimming fry. Clutch sizes in Mayaheros urophthalmus run from a few hundred to over a thousand eggs depending on female size; eggs hatch in a few days at warm temperatures, and the wrigglers are moved to pits before becoming free-swimming. Parental care is extended — the pair guards the school of fry for several weeks, and the group is documented producing multiple broods through a long warm season. In a floodplain river like the San Pedro, that multiple-brood capacity would let a pair exploit the long wet season, and the biparental, open-substrate-spawning pattern of the group is almost certainly retained in trispilus.
In the aquarium
Mayaheros trispilus is essentially absent from the aquarium hobby as a named fish — it is not collected or traded under its own name, and what reaches keepers as 'Mayan cichlid' is overwhelmingly Mayaheros urophthalmus. Any husbandry guidance is therefore by extension from its better-known relatives, which are hardy, undemanding, and well suited to keepers who can manage their aggression. A pair would want a tank on the order of 65 US gal or more with an open sandy bottom, scattered rock, wood and roots for cover and territory boundaries, and the warm, neutral-to-alkaline, moderately hard water of its Petén home (pH around 7-8, temperature around 77–82 °F); the group tolerates a touch of salt and copes with a wide chemical envelope. The standing caution for the whole Mayan-cichlid group applies: they are robustly territorial and become genuinely combative when spawning, so tankmates must be sturdy and the tank large enough to defuse aggression. Feeding is trivial — they accept pellets, frozen and live foods readily. None of this is specific to trispilus, and a keeper should treat the name as a poorly-defined Petén member of the urophthalmus complex rather than a distinct aquarium fish.
Conservation
Mayaheros trispilus has not been assessed in its own right by the IUCN Red List; the conservation evaluations in this group treat the Mayan cichlid as the single widespread species Mayaheros urophthalmus (assessed Least Concern), reflecting the same taxonomic uncertainty that surrounds trispilus's validity. Its Petén range falls within the Usumacinta basin, a large and still relatively intact lowland river system, which would buffer a genuinely distinct trispilus better than the single-cenote or single-island forms of the group. The familiar regional pressures nonetheless apply — deforestation and agricultural expansion across the Petén, pollution, and the spread of introduced fishes (including African tilapias) through Central American freshwaters. The broader Mayan-cichlid lineage is in no danger — it is abundant, adaptable and even invasive where introduced (notably in Florida) — and a widely-distributed floodplain form like trispilus, if distinct, would be among the more secure members. For now the honest statement is that the taxon is unassessed and its very distinctness unresolved.