Why Bristlenose Pleco

[itiwhetu]

I will stand corrected actually Plecostomus is actually the species name. And I can't seem to find it anywhere further up the order. Which means we really have just decided somewhere along the road that pleco is a cute name and all these fish are plecos. Very confusing since it covers so many different fish.

 

[itiwhetu]

A Bristlenose clearly IS a plecostomus. As are all species in the Ancistrus genus.

“Plecostomus” is not a genus. The original plec was (assumed to be) Hypostomus plecostomus (in fact a few Hypostomus spp were involved there). Since then all loricariids of similar shape are colloquially called “plecs”. Nothing wrong with that, it’s a useful name to group them by.
Ancistrus, Hypostomus, Pterygoplichthys, Panaque, Pseudacanthicus, Peckoltia, and many more. All the loricariid genera with that ‘plec shape’ are ‘plecostomus’.

Not to be confused with Hypostomus plecostomus which was the origin of the term.

So under that logic we then should just call all Cichlids, Sickos

 

[Ichthys]

So under that logic we then should just call all Cichlids, Sickos

Well a lot of them are, lol.
Yeah it’s just a made up name for all the ‘pleco-shaped‘ loricariids.

The first plecs kept were thought to be H. plecostomus, so when others came along they were ‘different types of plecostomus’. Much the same as the term ‘common pleco’, which became it’s common name, stayed in use when they changed to Pterygoplichthys, which are now the ‘common plecos’.