Taxonomy & naming
Chiloglanis lamottei was described by the French ichthyologist Jacques Daget in 1948, with the type locality given as Mount Nimba, in the Zié drainage, at roughly 1558–1640 ft altitude on the Guinea side of the massif. It belongs to the family Mochokidae — the African squeakers and upside-down catfishes — and to the genus Chiloglanis, sometimes called the suckermouth squeakers, which the Catalog of Fishes and PlanetCatfish both place at around 66 named species spread across sub-Saharan Africa and the Nile basin. The genus remains under active taxonomic study: recent work on Upper Guinean forest streams (the same region as this species) has turned up multiple cryptic lineages within what was once treated as a handful of wide-ranging species, so the boundaries of C. lamottei and its close relatives are still being refined.
The genus name Chiloglanis combines Greek cheilos (lip) and glanis (a catfish), a direct reference to the enlarged, fleshy oral disc that defines the group. The species epithet lamottei honours the French naturalist Maxime Lamotte, who led pioneering biological surveys of the Mount Nimba massif in the mid-20th century and after whom several Nimba-endemic species are named.
Morphology
Chiloglanis lamottei is a small, flattened, scaleless catfish, reaching only about 2 in standard length — a true miniature even by the standards of its genus. Like other Chiloglanis it has a broad, depressed head and a highly modified mouth: the lips and several barbels are fused and expanded into a ventrally directed sucking disc, ringed with small papillae, that lets the fish clamp onto smooth or algae-slicked rock in fast current. This oral disc is the single most distinctive feature of the genus and gives rise to the common trade name "suckermouth squeakers" for the group as a whole.
As in all Mochokidae, the skin is naked (no scales), and the pectoral and dorsal fins carry stiff, serrated spines that can be locked erect — a defence that also makes the fish awkward and potentially painful to net. The body is typically drab olive-brown to grey, patterned with mottling that camouflages it against rock and gravel in swift, clear water.
Habitat
This species is known only from the Mount Nimba region on the Guinea–Côte d'Ivoire border, within streams that feed the Cavally River system — part of the Upper Guinean forest ecoregion, one of West Africa's foremost centres of freshwater endemism. It lives in swiftly flowing mountain streams over boulders, cobble and woody debris, where torrential flooding is a normal part of the rainy-season cycle.
Like other rheophilic Chiloglanis, it is restricted to well-oxygenated, fast-flowing, generally clear water rather than the sluggish, blackwater habitats used by many other African catfishes. Data on the exact temperature and chemistry of its home streams are sparse in the available sources, but the broader Mount Nimba stream network is characteristically cool-to-moderate, well-aerated upland water rather than warm, still lowland water.
Feeding
Chiloglanis as a genus feed mainly on periphyton — the algae and associated microorganisms that coat rocks in current — grazing it from boulder and cobble surfaces with the rasping oral disc, and this generalisation applies to C. lamottei as its closest available evidence. Like most small benthic catfishes, foraging activity is thought to increase after dark, when the fish is less exposed to predators while working the rock surfaces.
Species-specific dietary data for C. lamottei were not found in the cache; in a research or display setting, the safe approach follows the genus: offer algae wafers and other grazing foods, supplemented with small sinking invertebrate foods, delivered mainly in low light.
Mating
No courtship or spawning behaviour has been documented for Chiloglanis lamottei in the sources available here. It is not a species that appears in the aquarium trade or in captive-breeding literature, so nothing specific can be said about pairing, triggers or spawning sites beyond what is inferred from its rheophilic, rock-clinging lifestyle.
Breeding
Breeding biology for this species is essentially unknown — it has not been reported bred in captivity, and no wild reproductive data were found in the cache. This is consistent with the wider genus: most Chiloglanis are little-known micro-endemics of remote, fast-water habitats rather than aquarium or aquaculture subjects, so specifics on egg placement, parental care or fry development should be treated as data sparse rather than assumed. Do not infer a bubble-nest, cave-spawning or scattering strategy for this species without direct evidence.
In the aquarium
Chiloglanis lamottei is not established in the aquarium hobby, and given its narrow, threatened range it should not be sought from wild collection. It is included here for completeness as part of the genus's diversity rather than as a recommended aquarium subject. Its confirmed adult size is small — about 2 in SL — but that alone does not make it aquarium-appropriate: it is a specialist of cold, torrential, highly oxygenated headwater current that is very difficult to replicate in a static home tank, and its status as a single-region endemic means any wild-caught supply carries real conservation risk.
Any keeper who did encounter a Chiloglanis species should bear in mind the traits shared across the genus: the skin is scaleless, so medications (particularly copper-based treatments) should be dosed conservatively, as with loaches and other naked-skinned catfishes; and the locking, serrated pectoral and dorsal spines can snag a net and jab bare skin, so fish should be moved in a container rather than netted. Strong current, high dissolved oxygen and algae-covered hardscape for grazing would be non-negotiable requirements for any Chiloglanis kept long-term.
Conservation
The IUCN Red List assesses Chiloglanis lamottei as Vulnerable. Its entire known range is confined to a small number of streams draining the Mount Nimba massif into the Cavally River, on the Guinea–Côte d'Ivoire border — an area of high endemism but also of mining pressure, forest clearance and stream degradation, all of which threaten the fast, clear, well-oxygenated water this species depends on.
Because the species is a narrow-range headwater endemic with no meaningful aquarium trade, its conservation outlook rests almost entirely on habitat protection within the Mount Nimba region rather than on any captive population. Ongoing taxonomic work on Upper Guinean Chiloglanis may still refine exactly which populations belong to C. lamottei, which is itself a conservation-relevant uncertainty for such a geographically restricted group.