Cichla monoculus

From Froese and Pauly (2018): “Following its introduction [to Singapore], very significant reductions in the abundance of other fish species in the reservoirs were noticed by anglers.\"; \"Zaret and Paine (1973) demonstrated that the introduction of a novel apex predator (peacock bass, Cichla monoculus, previously C. ocellaris) into Lake Gatun, Panama in 1969 had strong community‐level effects. (Sharpe et al. 2017)\"

The introduction of C. monoculus has had a dramatically negative effect on the native ichthyofauna. Long-term studies have shown how the introduction of C. monoculus has altered the composition of fish communities in Lake Gatun, decreasing both abundance and biomass of several local species while completely extirpating others (Sharpe et al., 2016; Zaret and Paine, 1973).

\"Zaret and Paine (1973) demonstrated that the introduction of a novel apex predator (peacock bass, Cichla monoculus, previously C. ocellaris) into Lake Gatun, Panama in 1969 had strong community‐level effects. By comparing native fish communities across the invasion front, they found that over 60% of the most common native fish species were extirpated and the rest strongly reduced in areas colonized by C. monoculus. These effects persisted at least 4 years post‐introduction (Zaret 1982).\"; \"By quantitatively comparing with Zaret and Paine's (1973) historical data, we showed that the native fish community of Lake Gatun has not recovered 45 years after the peacock bass introduction, particularly in terms of abundances. The continued dominance of peacock bass and paucity of small‐bodied prey is consistent with their later predictions of “no recovery” (Zaret 1982), rather than with a “return to equilibrium” scenario (Zaret and Paine 1973).\"