“HECKEL “CROSSES” INVENTED IN 1981!!! In the July 1981 issue of TFH, Burgess, suspecting he had likely been working with flawed collecting data, questioned the validity of the Schultz taxonomy as well as own subspeciation of “willischwartzi” . Burgess wrote, “it appears all forms of the discus mentioned will readily cross breed in captivity. In fact such crossings have been going on for so long and to such an extent that it is virtually impossible to determine the lineage of any one color variety. So to apply a scientific name to many of the discus varieties cannot be done.” Burgess now hypothesizes, is “willischwartzi” a cross with aequifasciata.? Burgess was still clinging , but not too tightly, to the idea that the Heckel Discus - the true S. discus , is an exclusively a Rio Negro fish and is a species unto itself. Burgess elaborated further that a central bar discus fish found outside of the Rio Negro could be a hybrid, or an extension of the Rio Negro population…with an intimation that discus are all one species. The hobby, after reading part of the above started calling “willischwartzi” - “Heckel Crosses”. As with earlier Schultz and Burgess papers, the whole thing wasn’t read by hobbyists. In the same year, 1981, I received a paper from Dr. Hanel, a Czech ichthyologist who independently hypothesized that all discus were one species in a Czech . Hanel examined a number of S. discus and of S. aequifasciata “species and subspecies” and couldn’t find anything about scale and fin ray counts that made S. aequifasciata different than S. discus . (Hanel, L., (1981) Note on Symphysodon aequifasciata (Cichlidae, Osteichthys) Vest. cs. Spolec. zool. 45; pp 241-248.) Meanwhile, the hobby of discus kept going in the opposite direction from the science of discus. So it’s no surprise that some say they are hard to breed. I found the attached black and white photos in my files. They are from about 1980 (?). I am not certain who was the photographer. I don’t remember, so I’ll have the Discus Study Group claim copyright © 1980 - 2014, until someone lets me know who should really get credit. To me, these are just Heckel Bar phase Abacaxis or upper Madeira fish..not crosses, not “willischwartzi” but just a variant of S. discus as the all discus fishes are ! More about Heckels to come.
Posted on: Sat, 19 Jul 2014 20:50:33 +0000