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Summary The present work provides the estimates of morphometric relationships for 22 native freshwater fish species (11 Characidae, five Loricariidae, two Heptapteridae, one Astroblepidae, one Crenuchidae, one Curimatidae and one Erythrinidae) collected in the Alto Madre de Dios River (Cuzco and Madre de Dios, Peru) in June 2012 using a mobile backpack electrofishing unit. These are the first length–weight relationships reported for 24 species, mostly endemic to the Amazonian basin. Knowledge regarding these biometric relationships can be relevant in the management and conservation of the local fishes and fisheries.

Summary Body length and weight relationships were estimated for sixteen native freshwater fish species (ten Characidae, three Loricariidae, two Heptapteridae and one Astroblepidae, mainly small-sized fish) collected in the Andean piedmont Hacha River (Caqueta, Colombia) by electrofishing. These are the first length–weight and length–length parameters reported for the species, which are mostly endemic to the Amazonian basin. Maximum lengths in eight of the sixteen studied species are also reported. Knowledge of this biometric data and their relationships can be relevant in the management and conservation of the local fish and fisheries.

Fil: Miquelarena, Amalia Maria. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas. Centro Cientifico Tecnologico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Limnologia "Dr. Raul A. Ringuelet". Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo. Instituto de Limnologia; Argentina

Discovery of the Amazon sailfin catfish Pterygoplichthys pardalis (Castelnau, 1855) (Teleostei: Loricariidae) in Vietnam By B. A. Levin, P. H. Phuong and D. S. Pavlov Papanin Institute for Biology of Inland Waters, Russian Academy of Sciences, Yaroslavl Province, Russia; Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia; Joint Vietnamese–Russian Science and Technological Tropical Centre, Nghia Do, Cau Giay, Hanoi, Vietnam

Summary Evaluated were the length–weight relationships of six freshwater fish species caught in the Santa Cruz Reservoir in the semiarid region of Brazil: one Characidae, one Prochilodontidae, one Anostomidae, two Loricariidae and one Cichlidae, providing the first references of length–weight relationships and new maximum lengths for these species.

Native to South and Central America, many of the 700 species of suckermouth armored catfishes (Loricariidae, Siluriformes) are popular with aquarium hobbyists as algae-controlling ornamental fishes and are therefore bred, shipped and sold around the world. They are characterized by bony plates covering the body, a pair of subterminal barbels, sucking lips, usually a spine in front of the adipose fin, and a flat-bottom body shape (Page and Burr, 1991), and are naturally occurring in a variety of freshwater habitats from sea level to 3000 m, often surviving in conditions that exclude other fishes. Members of the genus Pterygoplichthys differ from most other loricariids by having a large dorsal fin with 10 or more dorsal fin rays, which gives them their common name �sailfin catfish (Nico and Martin, 2001; Nelson et al., 2004; Page and Robins, 2006). Three species of Pterygoplichthys (Pterygoplichthys multiradiatus, Pterygoplichthys pardalis, and Pterygoplichthys disjunctivus) are closely related in that they lack an elevated supraoccipital process and have the supraoccipital bone posteriorly bordered by three scutes. Among these three species only P. multiradiatus (Hancock, 1898) has a pattern of uncoalesced dark spots on a light background (Page and Robins, 2006)