Clowns - true or false percula?

False

 

I say false ....the black lines are to thin.

 

The false has wider black lines than the true. the pic is a true

 

I gotta say, this might not be as definitive as you think. For background, I have been keeping and researching clowns for 20 years, my sister is a biology professor, I follow everything on clowns pretty closely. There is a discussion among biologists and university researchers on whether there are 29 species of clowns at all, or just one species and many different breeds, much the same way as all dogs are one species. The DNA is so very close, they hybridize so often in the wild, the hybrids have viable offspring; the more the study the more blurred the lines between clown species is becoming. They have already been split up into several complexes - sebae complex, tomato complex, percula complex, and maroon complex. I myself by into the "breed" species of clown. A few species are believed to be common hybrids (A. lazetonatus comes to mind).

The biology texts state that there is a dispute whether percs and occs are really one species, which really kicked off the discussion.

Ignore the black bands. That is melanism that causes it, and that is largely diet/environment related. 20 years ago when I got in the hobby the black bands on percs commonly disappeared over time - all were wild caught, and it was diet related. Foods are much better now.

The most accurate methods of differentiating percs and occs are the eye (percs have orange around them; occs are all black) and where they swim in the tank. Percs swim high in the water column more often than not, and these two do, and occs swim low in the water column.

These are most likely percs. They are also small, and percs are smaller than occs

 

i say false. beautiful pic though