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redit for itsdiscovery isusuallygiven
to Robert John Lechmere Guppy, a
Londoner, who found some small
colourful fish inTrinidad in1866 and sent
them to the British Museum of Natural
History, where the ichthyologist, Albert
Günther, described the species and
named it
Girardinusguppii
inhonourof its
‘discoverer’. However, it later transpired
thatLechmereGuppywasnot theoriginal
discoverer. In fact, the fish had already
beendescribed seven years earlier (1859)
by German ichthyologist, Wilhelm Karl
C
Everyone on the planet knows about the guppy…evennon-fishkeepers.
Indeed, it’s true to say that the guppy is one of the most famous of all
freshwater fishes in the world, with only a few exceptions, such as the
goldfishor thepiranha. It alsohas oneof the longest historieswithin the
aquariumhobbyand trade.
FocusonGuppies
by JohnDawes
TriangleGuppies fromSouth-EastAsia.
Wild-caughtmaleof theGuppy fromVenezuela.These fishes canbevery colorful.
All photos:FrankSchäfer
Hartwig Peters, who named the
Venezuelan specimens he had examined
as
Poecilia reticulata
.
Other descriptions, and other names, are
also encountered in the early literature
regardingguppies.This isnot surprisingat
all,bearing inmind thewidegeographical
distribution of the species (Venezuela,
Barbados, Trinidad, northern Brazil, the
Guyanas, East Timor). Fish with such
distribution almost invariably exhibit
colour and other variations throughout
their range, and this often results in the
same speciesbeinggivendifferentnames
by different ichthyologists…or even by
the same ichthyologist. As a result, the
guppywas givenmanynames during the
early days following its discovery, among
which, the best-known is
Lebistes
reticulatus
. Interestingly, this name was
coined by Peters himself, i.e. the original
describer of the guppy, who had already
named it
Poecilia reticulata
!
It is also little surprising that, when
Evergreens
