''Allotoca meeki'', commonly known as the Zirahuen allotoca or the ''tiro de Zirahuén'', is a species of fish

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

Lake Zirahuén Lake Zirahuén is a small endorheic lake in the municipality of Santa Clara del Cobre in Michoacán, Mexico. It is a deep mountain lake with a sandy bottom that is partially covered with mud. It covers an area of and has a volume of . At times La ...

, a small

endorheic An endorheic basin (; also spelled endoreic basin or endorreic basin) is a drainage basin that normally retains water and allows no outflow to other external bodies of water, such as rivers or oceans, but drainage converges instead into lakes ...

mountain lake in

Michoacán Michoacán, formally Michoacán de Ocampo (; Purépecha: ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Michoacán de Ocampo ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Michoacán de Ocampo), is one of the 32 states which comprise the Federal Entities of ...

state of central Mexico. The

specific name Specific name may refer to: * in Database management systems, a system-assigned name that is unique within a particular database In taxonomy, either of these two meanings, each with its own set of rules: * Specific name (botany), the two-part (bino ...

honours the

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

ichthyologist Ichthyology is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish, including bony fish ( Osteichthyes), cartilaginous fish (Chondrichthyes), and jawless fish (Agnatha). According to FishBase, 33,400 species of fish had been described as of Octobe ...

Seth Eugene Meek (1859-1914) who wrote the first review of the fishes of Mexico.

Conservation

The Zirahuén allotoca is critically endangered. The species has a small range, limited to a single lake basin. Two non-native predatory species of bass (''

Micropterus salmoides The largemouth bass (''Micropterus salmoides'') is a carnivorous freshwater gamefish in the Centrarchidae (Centrarchidae, sunfish) family (biology), family, a species of black bass native to the eastern and central United States, southeastern ...

'' and '' M. punctulatus'') were introduced to Lake Zirahuén in 1933, and by the 1990s the allotoca had been extirpated from the lake. A population survived in the Estanque de Condempas in Opopeo, a small lake on the Río El Silencio tributary of Lake Zirahuén. Bass invaded the estanque in the 2000s, and by 2011 no allotocas could be found there. As of 2017 a few allotocas have survived in an outlet of the lake, and in a nearby spring-fed pond where bass are also found.

References

meeki Freshwater fish of Mexico Endemic fish of Mexico Natural history of Michoacán Taxa named by Jose Álvarez del Villar Fish described in 1959 {{Cyprinodontiformes-stub