''Heros efasciatus'' is a species of

tropical The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the Equator. They are defined in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere at S. The tropics are also referred to ...

freshwater

cichlid Cichlids are fish from the family Cichlidae in the order Cichliformes. Cichlids were traditionally classed in a suborder, the Labroidei, along with the wrasses ( Labridae), in the order Perciformes, but molecular studies have contradicted this ...

native to the

Amazon basin The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about , or about 35.5 percent of the South American continent. It is located in the countries of Bolivi ...

in South America. It is commonly found in the aquarium trade, often in its gold colored variation rather than the wild-type olive green one.

Diet

''Heros efasciatus'' is one of the few cichlid species that act a regular

frugivore A frugivore is an animal that thrives mostly on raw fruits or succulent fruit-like produce of plants such as roots, shoots, nuts and seeds. Approximately 20% of mammalian herbivores eat fruit. Frugivores are highly dependent on the abundance an ...

, quite notably during the wet season when

riparian zones A riparian zone or riparian area is the interface between land and a river or stream. Riparian is also the proper nomenclature for one of the terrestrial biomes of the Earth. Plant habitats and communities along the river margins and banks ar ...

become inundated with water.

Concerns

Over the past few years, the popularity of ''Heros efasciatus'' within the aquarium trade has increased. Consequently, this species could be susceptible to over-exploitation, primarily because of their natural low densities and low

fecundity Fecundity is defined in two ways; in human demography, it is the potential for reproduction of a recorded population as opposed to a sole organism, while in population biology, it is considered similar to fertility, the natural capability to pr ...

References

Cichlid fish of South America efasciatus Fish described in 1840 Taxa named by Johann Jakob Heckel {{Cichlidae-stub