Caecobarbus
genus of fishes
Caecobarbus is a monospecific genus of freshwater ray-finned fish belonging to the family Cyprinidae. which includes the carps, barbs and related fishes. The only species in the genus is Caecobarbus geertsi, the African blind barb or Congo blind barb (known as Nzonzi a mpofo in the local Kikongo language, meaning "blind barb"). This threatened cavefish is only known from Democratic Republic of the Congo, George Albert Boulenger described this fish in 1921 and it apparently lacks any close relatives in the Congo region.
Despite its common name, "African blind barb", other blind cave cyprinids are indigenous to Africa, notably the Somalian Barbopsis devecchi and Phreatichthys andruzzii.
Range
The Congo blind barb is found only in the Thysville Cave system, a part of the lower Congo River basin (notably Kwilu and Inkisi tributaries) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The area where it is found covers about 120 km2 (45 mi2), and is located at an altitude around 700–850 m (2,300–2,800 ft) above sea level. It was initially known from seven caves in the Thysville system and an additional seven were discovered in the 2000s (decade). The caves where found have high levels of calcium bicarbonate in the water and high variations in flood levels, meaning that animals such as terrestrial cave insects are absent.
Conservation
In the seven caves where first discovered, the total population has been estimated at perhaps 7,000 individuals in the 1950s; no estimates are available for the seven more recently discovered populations.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Caecobarbus” is genus of fishes. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Caecobarbus, genus and fishes, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Caecobarbus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.