past events

Scott Davis, a retired school teacher from Chicago, has sustained a life-long passion of for fish.  Scott returns to Minnesota to deliver talks to MAS and later to the weekend show for the Minnesota Killie Keepers.  His Thursday talk for MAS is on Paraphyosemion, a subset group of the killies.  This group includes gardneri and closely realted relatives.

talk summary

One of the mainstays of the killifish hobby has been the gardneri and closely related relatives. In the last 40 + years some form of the gardneri gardneri group has often been one of the first killifish an aquarist has had success with.

Yet the very term gardneri has been fraught with confusion. The first mention of gardneri in the American aquarium literature features an article and photo of a fish that isn't a gardneri and was identified to the author as another killifish. When what we know as the real garderni were finally imported to the US as eggs they were introduced under not one but two names of convenience now known to be the names of other killies.
There has been quite a history of taxonomic changes in the species, "sub-species" and genus names of the gardneri. It can be sorted out. It is a gossipy and somewhat convoluted process.

But in a way that challenge can spoil some of the fun of keeping strains of "the guppy of the killifish" and some aquarists have found awork-around to the disputes and changes by just referring to different strains by their collecting location. "I've got a pair of Misaje" resonates surprisingly well with quite a number of people.
The robust "cigar-shaped" African killies were removed from the genus Aphyosemion (the others are "cigarette-shaped" African killies) and placed in the genus Fundulopanchax by Dr Lynn Parenti in 1981. They were split into Paraphyosemion (gardneri and allies) and All Other Fundulopanchax for the purpose of establishing appropriate show classes.

One almost needs a score card as a few species have been shuffled in or more often out of Paraphyosemion as taxonomists have considered the species' physiology, habitat range, chromosomal arrangements, ability to hybridize, keeping of eggs as a plant spawner or annual and more recently DNA studies. And then the species still in the subgenus have been split into an increasing number of species by the "splitters" (as opposed to the lumpers).

Still their colors, behaviors and ease of reproduction have made them so popular with Minnesota killifish keepers that they made the almost unprescidented decision to split Paraphyosemion into two of their 13 show classes. That is an impressive measure of how popular they are here.

As to what Scott thinks of all of the nomenclatural stuff, he probably would say, "Pass me that wonderful pair from Makurdi."

bio

Way back in antediluvian times, Scott Davis' dad would take him and his brother to a local lake and (between all the hard work of baiting hooks and freeing bluegills) he would watch all of the excitement engendered by the discovery of those sleek, sharp -finned creatures from what seemed to be a whole n'other world. It was not too much later that various critters began following Mr Davis' older son home from local wetlands. A subversive 7th grade science teacher sent home a small pickle jar of six baby common guppies (somewhat in exchange for a collection of turtles, which remained behind).

So he has been keeping livebearers since Dwight Eisenhower was president. Later on, as a high school history and social studies teacher, he was approached by a committee of students seeking a sponsor for a high school aquarium club. When he actually wore a sports coat, his students knew he was force-hatching killies and needed the pockets for the egg vials.  Killies of course are just primitive livebearers. The club's dozen tanks left a different ambiance and humidity level to his team teaching and world history rooms. At the moment he is retired until he gets a better offer.

He has been involved in a number of Chicago area clubs over the years, serving in most of the capacities available. It has been particularly enjoyable palavering with other aquarists, toodling out articles for club pubs, participating in on-line discussions and presenting programs on a variety of aquatic topics to a number of aquatic clubs in the western Great Lakes region. More recently he has been primarily involved in small ways with the CKA locally and nationally for a while with NANFA and ALA and still as a member of the AKA He has volunteered a large part of the last decade to coaching and encouraging new aquarium hobbyists on-line. He still finds great joy in keeping and sharing a variety of fishes, including some NA natives, livebearers, killies and rainbowfishes.

None of these things will see a soul saved or the opposite. Nor leave much of a mark on our larger society. But it has been a lot of fun.