Petrotilapia flaviventris "Machili Island"
Petrotilapia flaviventris (Chiteko, Chiwi Rocks, Chizumulu Island, Cobwe, Linganjala Reef, Londo Bay, Lumbaulo, Machili Island, Mbamba Islands, Undu Reef)
Machili Island — mah-CHEE-lee 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 Petrotilapia flaviventris account →Specific to Machili 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 Petrotilapia flaviventris.
The Machili Island population
Petrotilapia flaviventris "Machili Island" is the Machili Island population of Petrotilapia flaviventris, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the central part of the lake. It is the same species as Petrotilapia flaviventris, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Machili Island fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Petrotilapia flaviventris is a rock-grazing mbuna cichlid endemic to Lake Malawi, described only in 2011 from Chizumulu Island. Like all members of its genus, it wears a set of broad, fleshy, tooth-studded lips that it presses against algae-covered rock to comb out diatoms and loose filaments. The species takes its name from the egg-yolk yellow that floods the belly, throat, and lower flanks of breeding males, a feature that earned it the informal hobby tag "yellow ventral" before it had a formal name.
Full Petrotilapia flaviventris account →Sources
- malawi.si — Petrotilapia flaviventris "Machili Island"
- Petrotilapia flaviventris — FishBase summary
- Catalog of Fishes (Eschmeyer/CAS) — Petrotilapia flaviventris
- EOL — Petrotilapia flaviventris Lundeba, Stauffer & Konings 2011
- Lundeba, Stauffer & Konings (2011), Five new species of the genus Petrotilapia, Ichthyol. Explor. Freshwat. 22(2):149–168
- Ribbink et al. (1983), A preliminary survey of the cichlid fishes of rocky habitats in Lake Malawi, S. Afr. J. Zool. 18:149–310 (genus ecology, cited in IUCN)