Neale is a longstanding aquatics author with a particular passion for brackish water species.
MOLLIES ARE underappreciated. Whatever the colours of the farmed varieties, they pale into dullness compared with the wild mollies that live in caves, hypersaline lagoons, even in poisonous pools. There are even mollies that seem to break the laws of nature, but we'll get to that later…
What is a molly?
It's a simple enough question, but rather difficult to answer! Traditionally, guppies and mollies have been lumped into a single genus, Poecilia, but the DNA evidence reveals a more complicated picture.
The four most familiar molly species (Poecilia sphenops, Poecilia mexicana, Poecilia latipinna, and Poecilia velifera) clump together with less familiar ones like Poecilia gilli and Poecilia sulphuraria. Collectively, their closest relatives are Pamphorichthys, South…