Taxonomy & naming
The fish was described by the Norwegian-born ichthyologist George Dahl, a long-time student of the Colombian fish fauna, in 1960 in the journal Caldasia (volume 8, number 39, page 480), under the name Cichlasoma microlepis. The type series came from Pavarandó on the Río Baudó in western Colombia; the holotype (ICN-MHN 95) and a single paratype (ICN-MHN 95a) are held in the ichthyological collection of the Instituto de Ciencias Naturales of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá. For decades afterward the species was one of the most awkward pieces in the great unsolved puzzle of 'Cichlasoma,' the sprawling catch-all genus that nineteenth- and twentieth-century workers had used as a holding pen for hundreds of New-World cichlids. Burgess shifted it to Nandopsis in 2000; Kullander, in the 2003 Checklist of the Freshwater Fishes of South America, returned it to Cichlasoma but flagged it explicitly as incertae sedis — a heroine cichlid of uncertain genus that could not be confidently placed until the group was revised. That revision came from Oldřich Říčan, Lubomír Piálek, Klára Dragová and Jindřich Novák, whose 2016 monograph 'Diversity and evolution of the Middle American cichlid fishes' (Vertebrate Zoology 66(1):1–102) combined a broad molecular phylogeny with morphology and erected the new genus Chocoheros to hold this single, isolated lineage, with Cichlasoma microlepis as its type species. The Catalog of Fishes now lists it as valid as Chocoheros microlepis (Dahl, 1960), in family Cichlidae, subfamily Cichlinae, tribe Heroini. FishBase's species page still carries the older 'incertae sedis in Cichlasoma' remark in places, a reminder of how recently the name settled.
Morphology
Chocoheros microlepis is a small to medium heroine cichlid, reaching about 7.5 in in standard length (FishBase), with the deep-bodied, laterally compressed build typical of the heroine radiation. Its single most conspicuous feature is encoded in the name: microlepis means 'small-scaled,' and the fish carries a notably fine, high-count squamation compared with most of its Middle American relatives — the character Dahl singled out when he described it and the one Říčan and Piálek used to help diagnose the genus. Live colour, as far as the sparse record allows, is a pale rosy to silvery body, which is the basis for the Colombian common name mojarra rosada ('pink mojarra'); markings include the dark mid-lateral and caudal-peduncle spotting usual in the group, intensifying with mood and condition. Because the species has been collected so seldom and almost never kept or photographed alive, detailed accounts of breeding dress, fin shape and sexual dimorphism are simply not in the literature. Like other heroines it is presumed to show the standard pattern — larger, longer-finned males and rounder, higher-contrast ripe females — but this has not been documented for microlepis specifically, and the honest answer is that its living appearance is largely unrecorded.
Habitat
The species is a narrow endemic of the Río Baudó basin on the Pacific (western) slope of Colombia, entirely within the Chocó Department. FishBase and the Catalog of Fishes both give the range simply as the Baudó River basin; collection records run from the upper river — the type locality at Pavarandó, in the Serranía del Baudó foothills — down to Pizarro near the river's mouth on the lower Baudó (Bajo Baudó). The Chocó is one of the wettest places on Earth, a biogeographic region of perpetually rain-soaked lowland rainforest where annual rainfall in places exceeds 8,000–10,0.5 in, and the Baudó is a short, steep, isolated Pacific drainage walled off from the rest of Colombia by the Serranía del Baudó. That isolation is the likely reason the genus exists at all: a single heroine lineage cut off in its own small, hyper-wet basin. FishBase classes the fish as a freshwater, benthopelagic, tropical species; precise temperature, pH and depth preferences have not been measured and published, so the water-parameter figures given for this species are inferred from its warm lowland Pacific-slope setting rather than from direct study of microlepis itself.
Feeding
No diet study has been published for Chocoheros microlepis — its feeding ecology in the wild is essentially undocumented. FishBase carries only a modelled estimate, placing it at a trophic level of about 3.3, which would make it a generalist invertebrate-leaning omnivore rather than a specialist piscivore or a strict herbivore. That figure is consistent with the broad heroine pattern: most heroine cichlids of comparable size are opportunistic feeders taking aquatic insect larvae and other benthic invertebrates, small crustaceans, plant and detrital matter, and the occasional small fish, often working over the substrate. In the absence of gut-content data or field observation, anything more specific would be guesswork. What can be said is that the fine-scaled, moderately deep-bodied build is unremarkable for a generalist heroine and shows none of the obvious specializations (elongate sifting snout, hypertrophied lips, molariform pharyngeal teeth) that flag a dedicated sand-sifter, mollusc-crusher or scale-eater.
Mating
The reproductive behaviour of Chocoheros microlepis has not been observed or described, in the wild or in captivity. Like the great majority of Neotropical heroine cichlids it is presumed to be a biparental, pair-bonding substrate spawner — the near-universal pattern in the tribe, in which a male and female form a pair, defend a shared territory, and tend eggs and young together — but this is an inference from its phylogenetic placement, not a documented fact for this species. Nothing is published on its courtship, pair formation, seasonality or spawning triggers. The Chocó's near-aseasonal, perennially wet climate means that strict dry-season breeding cues of the kind seen in seasonal Central American cichlids may not apply, but again, this has not been studied. This is one of those cichlids whose entire life history is a blank that future fieldwork in the Baudó will have to fill.
Breeding
There are no published breeding records for Chocoheros microlepis — neither clutch sizes, egg or larval descriptions, nor accounts of parental care exist in the literature, and the species is effectively unknown in the aquarium hobby, so there is no captive breeding experience to draw on either. By analogy with related heroine cichlids it would be expected to lay adhesive eggs on a cleaned hard surface (a stone, root or cleared patch of substrate), with both parents guarding the clutch, fanning the eggs, and herding the free-swimming fry as a school — the standard open or semi-open biparental substrate-spawning mode of the tribe. But every part of that description is borrowed from relatives rather than observed in microlepis. Honestly reporting the state of knowledge: its fecundity, egg size, incubation period and degree of parental investment are all unrecorded.
In the aquarium
Chocoheros microlepis is, for practical purposes, not an aquarium fish. It is a rarely collected endemic of a remote, difficult-to-access Pacific-slope basin, it has essentially no presence in the ornamental trade, and there appear to be no established accounts of it being kept or bred by hobbyists. Any keeping advice is therefore extrapolation from comparable medium-sized Neotropical heroine cichlids rather than tested experience with this species, and should be read in that light. A fish of roughly 7–7.5 in would need a tank with a substantial footprint — on the order of 47 in / 65 US gal or more for a single specimen, larger for a pair with tankmates — furnished with a soft substrate, driftwood and roots, and some flat rocks or caves to serve as territory markers and potential spawning sites. Water tracking its warm, soft, lowland-rainforest origins (broadly warm temperatures and soft, slightly acidic to neutral water) would be the sensible starting point, with strong filtration and regular water changes as for any robust cichlid. Realistically, though, the relevant audience for this species is not the home aquarist but the field ichthyologist: it is far more valuable swimming in the Baudó, where it can finally be studied, than as a trade rarity, and its conservation status argues against any wild collection for the hobby.
Conservation
The IUCN Red List assesses Chocoheros microlepis as Near Threatened, in an assessment dated 8 October 2014 (taxon 49829585). The driver is its extreme range restriction: this is a single-basin endemic confined to the Río Baudó, a small Pacific-slope drainage, so that any basin-wide pressure falls on the whole world population at once. The Chocó, for all its rainfall and biodiversity, is under real and growing strain — deforestation, alluvial gold mining (a major and expanding source of mercury contamination and sedimentation in Chocó rivers), agricultural expansion and the broader instability of the region all bear on its freshwater habitats. Against that, the Baudó remains relatively remote and incompletely developed, which is part of why the fish is rated Near Threatened rather than in a higher-risk category. It carries no CITES or CMS listing and is of no fishery importance. Perhaps the most pressing conservation point is simply how little is known: with no published data on its population, diet, breeding or precise habitat requirements, a narrow-range Chocó endemic like this could decline substantially before anyone noticed. It is a strong candidate for targeted survey work.