Poecilia reticulata, Peters, 1859

Bragança, Pedro Henrique Negreiros de, Guimarães, Erick Cristofore, Brito, Pâmella Silva de & Ottoni, Felipe Polivanov, 2020, On the natural occurrence of Poecilia reticulata Peters, 1859 (Cyprinodontiformes: Poeciliidae), Cybium 44 (4), pp. 309-316 : 312

Poecilia reticulata records in northern South America

A geographic distribution map depicting P. reticulata records and distinguishing between its natural distribution range (yellow dot) and non-natural sites (red dots) was built based on extensive data from field surveys, museum collections, literature and online databases (see Material and Methods for detailed information) ( Fig. 3 ). The past decade field surveys in the Amazon conducted by UFRJ and CICCAA researchers failed in finding populations of P. reticulata as well as all the other ichthyological surveys that sampled in preserved pristine environments. The few records in the Brazilian Amazon are isolated and close to urban areas, probably in polluted environments ( Montag et al., 2011; Nogueira and Luvizotto-Santos, 2018; Beltrão et al., 2019) ( Fig. 3 ). Only two records in northern Brazil refer to specimens from the UFRJ and CICCAA fish collections, one from Belém, Pará State, collected in the 1990’s and the other from São Luis, Maranhão State, collected in 2019. Two localities, close to urban areas, were identified from the literature published on the Guiana Shield coastal river fish diversity, one in the Comté-Orapu, River drainage which drains the capital Cayenne ( Le Bail et al., 2012), and the other from Suriname River drainage, an impacted system that drains the capital Paramaribo ( Mol et al., 2012). Even assuming that all P. reticulata identifications from the Species Link and GBIF databases are correct, a similar pattern, consisting of sparse and isolate records in the Amazon and Guiana Shield, was confirmed ( Fig. 3 ).

Figures

Figure 3. – Geographic distribution range of P. reticulata in northern South America: natural range (yellow dots); non-natural distribution (red); region comprising the southern natural limit (grey zone). Black arrows indicate sites from where specimens were examined. Localities are based on GBIF and Species Link databases as well as Le Bail et al. (2012), Mol et al. (2012), Nogueira and Luvizotto-Santos (2018), and Dias et al. (2020).