collection points

[krellious]

I was just asked by a work college as to why different frontosa have different colors or strip counts. Does anyone know what environments factors cause the differences? peacock colours are also of interest

[Noddy65]

Thats a big question and almost impossible to answer...influences that reult in one colour or pattern are varied and are probably a combination of a few things rather than just one...its probably selection pressures that result in one colour being more common at a particualr location (eg .darker fish are less likely to get eaten by predators in darker environments than lighter fish)...mate selection would also have an influence (females may choose mates of certain colours/bars over others)...and also the collectors may be influencing what we see in our tanks (they would collect the brightest examples from a given location knowing they will fetch the highest price) and also our selection pressures (we also select for straight bars and brightest colours, I bet many of our fish that have been in captivity for a while are very different from their wild relatives)

[Link2Hell]

the concept is called "species flock"

wiki describes it as ............

In evolutionary biology, a species flock is a diverse, primarily monophyletic,^[1]

group of closely related species in an isolated area.A species flock may arise

when a species penetrates a new geographical area and diversifies to occupy

a variety of ecological niches; this process is known as adaptive radiation. The

first species flock to be recognized as such was the 13 species of Darwin's finches

on the Galápagos Islands described by Charles Darwin.

A species flock may also arise when a species acquires an adaptation that allows

it to exploit a new ecological niche.

All the members of a species flock usually share one or more synapomorphies.^[1]

which basically means that a fish of one local will adapt to the available niches for

survival and can be changed by changes in these parameters or by an outside influence

such as a similar species from a different local being part of the breeding scheme

this where the verge of geographic morph and speciation balance

have a look at this article it may help to understand it

http://www.evolutionsbiologie.uni-konstanz.de/pdf1-182/P162.pdf