Taeniolethrinops laticeps "Nkhata Bay"
Taeniolethrinops laticeps (Gome, Nkhata Bay, Tsano Rock)
Nkhata Bay — n-KAH-tah BAY (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 Taeniolethrinops laticeps account →Specific to Nkhata Bay
- 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 Taeniolethrinops laticeps.
The Nkhata Bay population
Taeniolethrinops laticeps "Nkhata Bay" is the Nkhata Bay population of Taeniolethrinops laticeps, a geographic colour form from the Malawi coast of Lake Malawi in the central part of the lake. It is the same species as Taeniolethrinops laticeps, distinguished by its collection locality and local coloration; aquarists keep and breed it as a discrete, provenance-labelled line.
Colour reference: living Nkhata Bay fish at malawi.si →
About the species
Taeniolethrinops laticeps is a large sand-dwelling haplochromine cichlid endemic to Lake Malawi, where it cruises open sandy flats at depths of roughly 16–256 ft and feeds by plunging its broad snout into the substrate to sift out chironomid larvae and other invertebrates. Breeding males excavate the most ambitious earthworks in the lake — bowl-shaped craters up to 5 ft across and 23.5 in deep — then court females at these spawning pits in a loose lek-like assembly. The species was one of the first Lake Malawi cichlids given a formal name, described by Ethelwynn Trewavas in 1931, but spent nearly sixty years under the wrong genus before Eccles and Trewavas themselves corrected the placement in 1989.
Full Taeniolethrinops laticeps account →Sources
- malawi.si — Taeniolethrinops laticeps "Nkhata Bay"
- FishBase — Taeniolethrinops laticeps (Trewavas, 1931)
- Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes — Taeniolethrinops laticeps species record
- The ETYFish Project — Family Cichlidae: Pseudocrenilabrinae (p–y): Taeniolethrinops laticeps etymology
- Trewavas, E. 1931 — 'A revision of the cichlid fishes of the genus Lethrinops Regan.' Annals and Magazine of Natural History (10) 7: 133–152 [original description; 13 syntypes BMNH 1930.1.31.212-224]
- Eccles, D.H. & Trewavas, E. 1989 — Malawian Cichlid Fishes: The Classification of Some Haplochromine Genera (Lake Fish Movies, Herten) [genus Taeniolethrinops erected; T. laticeps transferred]
- IUCN Red List — Taeniolethrinops laticeps "Nkhata Bay"