Red List of South African Species

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Notes

Numerous isolated upper catchment populations exist. Some southern populations appear morphologically different and need further examination. It must be noted that Labeobarbus nelspruitensis formerly belonged to the genus Varicorhinus, but following the work of Vreven et al. (2015), all southern African Varicorhinus species were synonymised with Labeobarbus (Skelton 2016).

habitat_narrative

Freshwater (=Inland waters)

This species is found in escarpment streams where they favour cool, flowing water habitats such as rapids, riffles and runs (Kleynhans 1984). Incomati Chiselmouth prefers habitats with hard, rocky instream structures (cobbles, boulders, bedrock) for effective feeding as its lips are modified to scrape periphyton from rocks as part of its feeding strategy (Weeks et al. 1996). The average flow velocity recorded in Incomati Chiselmouth habitat in the rapids and riffles was 0.63 m sec-1 (Kleynhans 1984). Juveniles primarily preferred moderate flows of > 0.6 m sec-1 in shallow waters (43 cm). They shelter in a variety of substrate and cover habitat types, predominantly in flow, but also with a high preference for root mats, cobbles in flow and boulders in quiet water (Weeks et al. 1996). No information is available on their breeding strategy, apart from that they breed in summer.

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