Kingdom Animalia Order Perciformes Subfamily Pseudocrenilabrinae Scientific name Neolamprologus meeli Rank Species | Phylum Chordata Family Cichlidae Tribe Lamprologini Higher classification Neolamprologus | |
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Similar Neolamprologus, Chalinochromis brichardi, Cichlid, Neolamprologus brevis, Chalinochromis | ||
Neolamprologus meeli
Neolamprologus meeli is a cichlid species in the subfamily Pseudocrenilabrinae. It is endemic to Lake Tanganyika, where it is found in the waters of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, and Zambia.
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It is sometimes placed in Lepidiolamprologus, and this may well be appropriate. As it seems, it belongs to a group also including N. boulengeri and N. hecqui (both also probable members of Lepidiolamprologus), L. attenuatus and L. kendalli.
As hybridization seems to have played a major role in the radiation of this group, the exact relationships of the present species are obscure; one specimens was found to belong to an mtDNA lineage quite similar to L./N. hecqui, while another was distantly similar to L. kendalli in this regard. Perhaps the former observation is based on a misidentified specimen; in any case it appears that a somewhat closer relationship between the present species and L. kendalli than of either to any other lamprologine is more likely than not. Yet as this observation is only based on analysis of mtDNA sequence data, it may just as well be that the first L./N. meeli were the hybrid offspring of a Lepidiolamprologus female ancestral to L. kendalli and a Neolamprologus male, with subsequent hybridization of L./N. meeli and L./N. hecqui.