Panaque
Overview
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
n armoured catfishes that are notable for being among the very few vertebrates that feed extensively on wood
Xylophagy
Xylophagy is a term used in ecology to describe the habits of an herbivorous animal whose diet consists primarily of wood. The word derives from Greek ξυλοφάγος "eating wood", from ξύλον "wood" and φαγεῖν "to eat", an ancient Greek name for a kind of a worm-eating bird...
. In addition, algae and aufwuchs
Aufwuchs
Aufwuchs is a term used to cover the small animals and plants that encrust hard substrates, such as rocks, in aquatic environments. The name originated as a German term literally meaning "surface growth" or "overgrowth", and is frequently mis-spelled "awfuchs" or similar due to the unusual "-ufw-"...
are an important part of the diet, and they use their rasping teeth to scrape this from rocks. These fish are also popular aquarium
Aquarium
An aquarium is a vivarium consisting of at least one transparent side in which water-dwelling plants or animals are kept. Fishkeepers use aquaria to keep fish, invertebrates, amphibians, marine mammals, turtles, and aquatic plants...
fish, where the sound of scraping as these fish forage for food is easily audible.
The genus Panaque was described in 1889 by Rosa Smith Eigenmann
Rosa Smith Eigenmann
Rosa Smith Eigenmann was the first notable female ichthyologist; first publishing in her own right, she later collaborated with her husband Carl H. Eigenmann, and some 150 species of fish are today credited "Eigenmann & Eigenmann" as a result.She was born in Monmouth, Illinois, the last of nine...
and Carl H. Eigenmann
Carl H. Eigenmann
Carl H. Eigenmann was an ichthyologist who, along with his wife Rosa Smith Eigenmann, described many of the fishes of North America and South America for the first time....
.
