Just a small update: As some may know (and already described in
ZSL London Zoo Anyone got a female Mangaraharan cichlid?) the search was a success and a tiny remaining wild population of Mangaraharan cichlids,
Ptychochromis insolitus, was discovered in late 2013. As a safeguard some of these were moved to a local facility in Madagascar and some were sent to Toronto Zoo, Canada. Male aggression is a problem and it is not unusual for them to kill other males and even female partners. However, they've been fairly successful with breeding at the local facility and since 2016 they've also bred it at Toronto. Offspring from Toronto was sent to Blue Planet Aquarium, Denmark, earlier this year, meaning that the species is back in Europe (after the last disappeared from Berlin and London several years ago). They are currently backstage at Blue Planet. Whether some eventually will go on-show later I do not know. They also received some of the closely related
P. grandidieri from Toronto and I guess they are more likely to go on-show soon.
The situation looks much brighter than just a few years ago but a problem remains: The remaining habitat is highly degraded. Although some remain in the wild, the habitat is barely suitable for the species. This is because of a dam meaning that it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to return the habitat to its better natural state in any near future (decades or more). One can hope that something eventually changes in its native habitat, allowing some of the captives to be used as a basis for reintroduction.