Listed below are all the
fishes other than Cichlidae that are known to occur in Lake Malawi,
or that have been claimed to occur there. Follow the links in the
family table to jump to each family's list
of genera and species. In the list, there are separate links to a page
about each species (usually illustrated), and to the bibliographic
citation of the original taxonomic description.
As with the cichlids, here too
the list includes fishes found in the lower parts of rivers and streams
that flow into the lake. It also includes species found in swamps that
fringe parts of the lakeshore. Some swamp fishes have been observed in
sheltered, vegetated sections of the main lake (e.g., Barbus
innocens; Jackson, 1961: 550). Moreover,
Oliver & McKaye (1982) showed that a
diverse assemblage of swamp-dwelling fishes is associated with the
"floating islands" of swamp vegetation
that commonly drift around the Lake's southwest arm.
This blurs the distinction in habitats between the fishes
of the lakeshore swamps and those of the Lake proper.
None of the twelve families is endemic to Lake Malawi, but two of
the genera (the cyprinid Engraulicypris and the clariid
Bathyclarias) and some of the species are endemic. For each
genus and species, therefore, endemicity is indicated.
Family table
Note:Bathyclarias was synonymized with the similarly adapted
deep-water Lake Tanganyika clariid genus, Dinotopterus, by
Greenwood (1961). Recently,
Anseaume & Teugels (1999) resurrected
Bathyclarias as a valid genus, arguing convincingly that the
similarities with Dinotopterus are due to convergence, like those
between the cichlids Pseudotropheus (L. Malawi) and
Tropheus (L. Tanganyika).
