''Otocinclus xakriaba'' is a species of
suckermouth catfish native to the
São Francisco river basin in
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...
. This species reaches a maximum length of (
SL).
''O. xakriaba'' is a
Batesian mimic
Batesian mimicry is a form of mimicry where a harmless species has evolved to imitate the warning signals of a harmful species directed at a predator of them both. It is named after the English naturalist Henry Walter Bates, after his work on bu ...
that mimics juvenile ''
Corydoras garbei''. The mechanism driving the mimicry is unknown.
[Axenrot, Thomas E., and Sven O. Kullander. "Corydoras diphyes (Siluriformes: Callichthyidae) and Otocinclus mimulus (Siluriformes: Loricariidae), two new species of catfishes from Paraguay, a case of mimetic association." ''Ichthyological Exploration of Freshwaters'' 14.3 (2003): 249–272.]
References
Hypoptopomatini
Fish of the São Francisco River basin
Taxa named by Scott Allen Schaefer
Fish described in 1997
{{Loricariidae-stub