Angels - PageSuite

TOP LEFT: N. KHARDINA; OTHERS: H. BLEHER
Pterophyllum sp. 5, from the Río Apaporis in Colombia.
a specimen from the Amazon River, purportedly from Barra, the
mouth area of the Río Negro.
Nomenclatural confusion
But eight years later, Cuvier reassigned the angelfish to the marine
genus Platax and called it Platax ? scalaris from “Bresil” (Cuvier
& Valenciennes 1831). Next, Jakob Heckel erected the genus
Pterophyllum (meaning “leaflike fins”) in 1840 and assigned the
species the new name of Pterophyllum scalaris.
Then, François de Castelnau, a French naturalist, described
another angelfish, which he collected from “Pará, Bresil”
during his Amazon expedition (1842–1847), as Plataxoides
dumerilii Castelnau, in 1855, although Heckel
had established Pterophyllum as the name of the
genus some 15 years before.
The confusion did not stop, as additional
angelfishes were collected in the lower course of
the Atabapo, an extreme blackwater tributary of the
Río Guviare, which empties into the upper Orinoco.
The Atabapo forms the border between Colombia and
Venezuela for almost its entire length. In 1903 one of the
best-known ichthyologists, Jacques Pellegrin, described the angelfishes
caught there as a subspecies of Pterophyllum scalare and
called them Pterophyllum scalare altum. The name related to the
unusually high body form and size. To the present day this is the
largest angelfish, the most majestic, elegant, and extraordinary of
them all.
My mother told me that the most recently described angelfish,
Pterophyllum eimekei Ahl, 1928, may be the smallest, and
supposedly originates from the Río Negro. But later on, just like
P. dumerilii, it was regarded as a synonym of P. scalare. However,
in my opinion, P. eimekei is definitely a valid species.
Despite all the scientific attention, it wasn’t until 1907 that
an importation of live specimens from the lower Amazon region
Pterophyllum sp. 3
is endemic to the Río
Jutai in Brazil.
Pterophyllum
sp. 2 from the
drainage of Lago
Paricatuba, lower Purus
basin, in Brazil. Note the threadlike
extensions to the anal fin.
Right: The striking coloration at the
base of the dorsal fin is species-typical
for Pterophyllum sp. 3 from
the Río Jutai.
I discovered this eight-banded
species, Pterophyllum sp. 4, in the
Brazilian Río Demini, a tributary
of the middle Río Negro.
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