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The Cocopeel Angelfish Inspires A Good, Old-Fashioned Taxonomy Fight!
The world of taxonomy is, more often than not, a stolid and staid affair, but every now and then a species comes along that gets everyone’s blood a-boiling. S
reefs.com
This article seems to suggest that what we know as C. Flavissima might not be as simple as we think. Could many of the “Lemonpeel Angelfish” making it into our hobby not be the true C. Flavissima but another species? Maybe even a lot of C. Cocosensis without us knowing it?
The interesting part is “Lemonpeels” found from many parts of the Pacific are shown to be virtually no different from C. Vrolikii in terms of DNA. Could they be a yellow form of C. Vrolikii?
This complex involving the Flavissima, Eibli, and Half-Black are well-known to hybridize. I suspect many of the specimens we get for sale may not be “pure” once we do some DNA analysis.
Bali Aquarich recently started breeding the commonly seen Lemonpeel x Half Black hybrids again and they reported that some specimens came out with tiger stripes, which is a dead giveaway that one or both parents in the broodstock pairs have Eibli DNA.