In the year 1990, Costa erected the genus Plesiolebias and assigned the taxon P. xavantei as the type species. Some of the species that were assigned earlier to the genus Cynolebias were transferred to Plesiolebias and in 1995 Costa diagnosed the group by 5 synapomorphic characters. Later in 1998 he divided the genus Plesiolebias into 3 different groups. Clade A: including P. aruana, and P. glaucopterus; Clade B. including P. lacerdai and P. xavantei and the monotypic subgenus Papiliolebias for Papiliolebias bitteri. The latter was in 1998b transferred to the, at that time, monotypic genus Papiliolebias that has 3 members nowadays.

The genus contains also at this very moment (2010) 5 known taxon. They are all small fishes, not over 40 mm in length and regarded as not easey to reproduce. At least the very small eggs (less than 1 mm) in combination with a long, up to 10 months, incubation period makes the species difficult to breed. Another big problem nowadays is to becom fishes from the wild as the Brazilian government did forbid the export of most fishes.

These fishes are little jewels, each of them very worth keeping and breeding. Its a pitty that it is so hard to get even only one of these species into our tanks.

Behaviour:

For breeding info see the species pages themself.