Taxonomy & naming
Archie Carr and Leonard Giovannoli described this fish in 1950 as Cichlasoma hogaboomorum, in their paper 'The fishes of the Choluteca drainage of southern Honduras' (Occasional Papers of the Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan). Like most Middle American cichlids it first went into the catch-all genus Cichlasoma; once that assemblage was broken up, it was moved to Amphilophus, and the Catalog of Fishes, FishBase, ITIS and GBIF now all list it as valid as Amphilophus hogaboomorum (Carr & Giovannoli, 1950). It sits among the heroine cichlids of subfamily Cichlinae, allied to the Pacific-slope Amphilophus of the northern Central American isthmus. The odd epithet hogaboomorum is a Latinised genitive plural — 'of the Hogabooms' — honouring George Beverly Hogaboom and Peter Hogaboom, who assisted with the type material. It is one of the few cichlid names that commemorate the collectors rather than a feature of the fish or its home water.
Morphology
Amphilophus hogaboomorum is a moderately sized, robust cichlid reaching about 6 in standard length (FishBase) — a compact member of the genus, well short of the bulk of its great red-devil and trimac relatives. The build is the familiar Amphilophus one: laterally compressed and fairly deep-bodied, with strong jaws and the genus's tendency for dominant males to grow a modest nuchal swelling on the forehead. Living fish show the standard Central American pattern — a pale, greyish or olive-tan ground broken by dark mid-lateral blotches or a broken lateral band, with a spot at the caudal-fin base — and the markings darken under stress and in breeding condition. Some individuals warm up to yellow or golden tones, again in keeping with the genus. Because the species is so little studied, fine diagnostic detail is thin in the popular literature, and identification rests mainly on its restricted Choluteca-basin range plus general Amphilophus form. Sexual dimorphism follows the genus norm: males run larger and heavier-headed, ripe females smaller and rounder.
Habitat
The guapotillo is essentially endemic to the Río Choluteca drainage on the Pacific slope of southern Honduras. The type series came from the Río Choluteca a few kilometres below the Choluteca bridge, at low elevation around 164 ft, and the species' documented range centres on this one Pacific-slope basin. It is a fish of warm, low-lying rivers: FishBase describes its environment as tropical, roughly 77–86 °F, with notably alkaline water — a pH around 8.5 and upward — which fits the hard, base-rich rivers draining the region's volcanic and sedimentary terrain. As a Pacific-slope fish of the dry southern Honduran lowlands, it lives with a strongly seasonal wet-and-dry climate, so river level and flow swing through the year. That narrow, basin-level distribution is the single most important fact about both its ecology and its conservation.
Feeding
Amphilophus hogaboomorum is a generalist omnivore of the river bottom. FishBase puts its trophic level at about 3.3 — a figure worked up from its size and the diets of related species rather than from any study of this fish — which places it as a mixed feeder taking benthic invertebrates and other small animal prey together with plant and detrital matter. The robust Amphilophus jaws support a versatile diet, and a fish this size in a warm lowland river would be expected to work over sand, gravel and rock for insect larvae, small crustaceans and molluscs, rounded out with algae and organic debris. No dietary analysis specific to the guapotillo appears to have been published, so its feeding is best read from the general ecology of medium-sized Pacific-slope Amphilophus.
Mating
As an Amphilophus, the guapotillo is a biparental, pair-bonding substrate spawner. Pairs form within the population, and the bonded male and female establish a territory around a chosen nest site and defend it together. Courtship runs through the usual cichlid sequence — lateral displays, fin-spreading, quivering and cooperative cleaning of the spawning surface — with both fish intensifying their colour as they ripen. Observations specific to Amphilophus hogaboomorum are scarce, but its behaviour can be read confidently from the strongly conserved genus pattern: a pair-bonded, territorial breeder in which both parents invest heavily in the brood. Territorial aggression sharpens around the nest, as it does in other medium Amphilophus.
Breeding
Amphilophus hogaboomorum is an open or semi-open biparental substrate spawner, in the genus mould. The adhesive eggs are laid on a cleaned hard surface — a stone, a root, or a cleared depression in the substrate — and tended by both parents: the female concentrates on fanning and close egg care while the male patrols the territory edge. Once the eggs hatch, the wrigglers are usually moved into a pit, and the free-swimming fry are then herded and guarded as a school by both adults. Clutch size has not been documented for this species specifically; medium-sized Amphilophus of similar dimensions commonly lay a few hundred eggs per spawn, with extended biparental care of eggs, larvae and free-swimming young. Like other seasonal Pacific-slope cichlids, it is expected to breed in the favourable part of the year, when warm water and the wet season make for good fry-rearing conditions.
In the aquarium
The guapotillo is kept only occasionally and is no staple of the trade; it turns up in specialist Central American cichlid collections far more than in general shops, so husbandry advice is largely extrapolated from comparable medium Amphilophus. Its manageable size makes it less demanding than the big red-devil relatives, but it is still a territorial substrate-spawner that needs proper space and the right water.
Tank: give a pair a good footprint — on the order of 55 US gal or more — with sand or fine gravel, rocks and wood for territory markers, cover and spawning sites, plus open swimming room.
Water: match the warm, hard rivers it comes from — around 77–86 °F and a distinctly alkaline pH, roughly 7.5–8.5 — with strong filtration and regular water changes.
Feeding: straightforward for an omnivore, on quality sinking pellets backed up with frozen and live invertebrates and some vegetable matter.
Tankmates: as with all Amphilophus, expect territoriality to spike during spawning, so pick robust tankmates of similar size and temperament and give a breeding pair room to hold its ground. Its rarity in the hobby and its Data Deficient status make it a fish best suited to aquarists ready to document and, where they can, propagate it.
Conservation
The IUCN Red List lists Amphilophus hogaboomorum as Data Deficient, assessed 3 February 2020 — a verdict that reflects how little is firmly known about its population size, trends and threats, not evidence that it is secure. What is clear is that this is a narrow-range fish confined essentially to one Pacific-slope drainage, the Río Choluteca of southern Honduras, and narrow-range freshwater fish in heavily used lowland basins are generally exposed to the region's familiar pressures: pollution from agriculture and from domestic and urban wastewater (the Choluteca runs past the city of Choluteca and carries the marks of human activity), water abstraction and altered flow, habitat degradation, and the spread of introduced species. Because the listing is Data Deficient, none of these is quantified as a population-level threat — but a small range combined with an under-studied population is exactly the situation in which a species can slip into decline unnoticed. It carries no CITES listing, and better field survey of the Choluteca basin would be the most useful step toward a firmer assessment.