The Eastern Province rocky (''Sandelia bainsii''), also known as rocky kurper, is a species of

fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of ...

in the family Anabantidae. It is

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 else ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

. The specific name of this species is thought to honour the Scottish geologist, explorer and soldier

Andrew Geddes Bain Andrew Geddes Bain (baptised 11 June 1797 – 20 October 1864), was a South African geologist, road engineer, palaeontologist and explorer. Life history The only child of Alexander Bain and Jean Geddes, both of whom died when Bain was still a ...

(1797-1864) who also collected

zoological specimen A zoological specimen is an animal or part of an animal preserved for scientific use. Various uses are: to verify the identity of a (species), to allow study, increase public knowledge of zoology. Zoological specimens are extremely diverse. Exampl ...

s. Bain served as a captain in the Cape Frontier Wars and may have fought the tribal chief Sandile, for whom Castelnau named the genus.

Distribution

It used to be found in small populations dispersed in small areas over a wide distribution throughout the Eastern Cape, such as in the Gulu River, Igoda River, Yellowwoods River ( Buffalo),

Nahoon River The Nahoon River ( xh, Nxaruni) is situated in the city of East London on the east coast of South Africa. Geography It is to the east of the Buffalo River harbour, and is to the west of Gonubie River. The suburb of Nahoon is on its west bank a ...

Kowie River The Kowie River (Coyi in Xhosa) is a river in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. It has its source in the hills of the "Grahamstown Heights" from where it flows in a south-easterly direction draining the major part of the Bathurst region, reaching ...

, Koonap River, Kat River (

Great Fish The Great Fish River (called ''great'' to distinguish it from the Namibian Fish River) ( af, Groot-Visrivier) is a river running through the South African province of the Eastern Cape. The coastal area between Port Elizabeth and the Fish Riv ...

) and the

Tyhume River The Tyhume River is a river in Amathole District Municipality in the central part of the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It springs in the forested mountains of Hogsback, part of the Amatola Mountains, and runs down the Tyhume River Valle ...

( Keiskamma). It is doubtful whether those fragmented populations will be viable in the future because they find themselves under a number of threats from agricultural practices, pollution and invasive species. It is found in the Bloukrans River in the

Blaauwkrantz Nature Reserve The Blaauwkrantz Nature Reserve is a small protected area near Makhanda (Grahamstown) designated for the purpose of conserving the endangered Eastern Province rocky. Nearby are the Waters Meeting Nature Reserve and Buffalo Kloof Protected Env ...

References

External links

Albany Museum - Freshwater Ichthyology
Sandelia Fish described in 1861 Taxa named by François-Louis Laporte, comte de Castelnau Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{Anabantiformes-stub