Talk:Skiffia

Skiffia is a genus of Goodeid that contains four species; Skiffia bilineata (Bean, 1887; Meek, 1902), S. lermae (Meek, 1902), S. multipunctata (Pellegrin, 1901) and S. francesae (Kingston, 1978).

All species are endemic to the Mesa Central area of Mexico. They typically have a limited tolerance to environmental degradation, and so are susceptible to anthropogenic disturbance. The exception to this is S. bilineata, which is comparatively more tolerant to eutrophication, turbidity and seasonal changes in environmental conditions (de la Vega-Salazar et al., 2003). All four Skiffia species face some conservation threat and have suffered local extinctions in more than 50% of areas studied where they were previously known to have existed (de la Vega-Salazar et al., 2003). S. lermae and S. bilineata are the most widely distributed of the genus, found over the states of Michoacán, Jalisco and Guanajuato. S. multipunctata has a restricted distribution in Michoacán and S. francesae has been declared extinct in the wild by the IUCN (de la Vega-Salazar et al., 2003). There is only one locality from which captive S. francesae stocks have been derived (Teuchitlán). Captive populations of S. francesae are maintained in a variety of locations by aquarium hobbyists, research institutes and zoos. The history of this particular species is unclear, but they are believed to have descended from one stock collected by Dr. R. Miller in 1976 (Langhammer, 1995); it appears that no other stocks descended from independent samples from this region.