Link review: "Guide to the South American Cichlidae"By Juan Miguel Artigas Azas, Apr 18, 1998. |
 |
The Guide to the South American Cichlidae has been one of my Internet favorites for a long time now. Dr. Sven Kullander has put together this magnificent page for the joy of all South American cichlid fanciers/researchers in the world. Think about it: If you have tried to get scientific information before you may know how hard it can be to obtain some papers, as several of them are more than 100 years old. Sven is making the difficulty to get accurate information a thing of the past. His great home page goals to perform every single genera and species of South American cichlid listed, with the including diagnosis, species into genera, etymology, geographical distribution and references. Many South American genera are already covered in detail and the number grows month after month. Most of those so far included genera and some of the species are illustrated with color photographs as well.
Beyond the taxonomic information about the South American cichlid genera, a proposed phylogenetic tree is also included in the page. This was built in accord with Dr. Melanie Stiassny's papers on the topic. The tree comes with links to the groups or genera considered. Groups are also listed in the home page with the genera they include.
Another fascinating feature of this page is without a doubt the cichlid name database, where you can search by scientific and common name, or even by author, an index of South American cichlid species including the describer, year and reference of publication, type locality and the currently accepted name of each one of them.
Of course, the page also comes with an introduction explaining what are cichlids and the composition and number of cichlid species in South America. In resume, this page is a solid reference of trustable information for all those of you who love South American cichlids, this page is for South American cichlids the same than Michael Oliver's "Cichlid Fishes from Lake Malawi" is for those of you who love Malawian cichlids.
© Copyright 1998, Juan Miguel Artigas Azas
All rights reserved
