Mexichromis festiva from South Africa

Dear Colin,

I think I will just call it Mexichromis cf mariei. Basically I suspect a number of these species may be just forms of each other. When I was at school, I was a keen shell collector and belonged to a shell club at the Auckland Museum and if we were very lucky the great New Zealand expert A.W.B. Powell would visit and help identify any problem shells we brought along. I had made friends with a trawlerman who used to give me rare finds from offshore New Zealand. One group of particular difficulty were volutes. New Zeland either had a  few species which were very variable in shape and colour or a lot of species each with very small geographic ranges.  Over some months I took the same shell along with different locality data and got 3 different species names. Apart from one friend, I never told anyone I did it, but it did give me an insight into the problems of identifying animals from single specimens, and the dangers of being an 'expert'. I guess Mexichromis could be my penance for tricking Dr Powell so many years ago.

Best wishes,
Bill Rudman