Tribus Callopanchini Huber,
2000.
Nimbapanchax petersi was the first "Roloffia" species to be
discovered by science, it was collected by the Frenchman M. Chaper in ca.
1881. The first species to be introduced into the aquarium hobby, was 3
females of Scriptaph. liberiense in 1908, discovered by the German
J. P. Arnold at the Siggelkow Import Firm in Hamburg. One year later Callopanchax
occidentalis & S. roloffi was collected by J. Grote in Sierra
Leone. But it was the German hobbyist E. Roloff, with 6 collecting
trips to Sierra Leone and 1 to Liberia, who really discovered "Roloffia".
The genus name Roloffia, Clausen
1966, is now considered an synonym of Callopanchax, G. S. Myers 1933
by most experts. The Genus is however still referred to as Roloffia
or Aphyosemion by many hobbyists specialised
in this group.
DNA sequencing research, carried out by W.
J. Murphy & G. E. Collier, has produced very
surprising results. Callopanchini is in fact not as generally
assumed closely related to Aphyosemion, but closer to Epiplatys,
thus reinstating the viewpoints of H.
Stenholt Clausen. This has resulted in the reinstating
of the genus Callopanchax see Korzen, which later has been
split see Huber.
Callopanchini
is divided into four genuses Callopanchax (Roloffia), Archiaphyosemion,
Scriptaphyosemion & Nimbapanchax, See Species.
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