Taxonomy & naming
The species was described by André Dunz and Ulrich Schliewen in 2012, in Zootaxa 3314, in a paper whose larger purpose was to describe this new rheophilic tilapia from Guinea and to re-examine Jacques Daget's older Tilapia rheophila from the same river. The two are close relatives and easily confused, and part of the value of the 2012 work was disentangling them. The epithet is a toponym: konkourensis 'refers to the Konkouré River, the drainage to which the new species appears to be endemic,' and is used as a noun in apposition.
The species was placed directly in Coptodon — the genus Dunz and Schliewen themselves resurrected (Gervais, 1853) for the substrate-spawning West and Central African tilapias in their 2013 molecular revision of the old 'Tilapia' catch-all. Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes lists it as valid as Coptodon konkourensis (Dunz & Schliewen 2012), distributed in the Konkouré River basin of Guinea. Its closest comparison is Coptodon rheophilus (the older Daget species from the same river), from which it differs in a suite of fine meristic and morphometric characters.
Morphology
Coptodon konkourensis is a very small tilapia — the type material tops out at about 3.5 in in standard length — and its defining feature is its shape. The describers single out an exceptionally slender, elongate body: body depth is only about 30–31.5 % of standard length, against roughly 33–52 % in other tilapias, making it the shallowest-bodied member of the group apart from the equally slim Coptodon fusiforme. The meristics are 16 dorsal spines and 11 soft dorsal rays, three anal spines and 8 anal soft rays, with 21 scales on the upper lateral line and just 8 on the lower (the low lower-lateral-line count separates it from Coptodon fusiforme, which has 9–12).
It nonetheless shows all the hallmark Coptodon characters: a lower pharyngeal jaw as long as broad with the anterior keel no longer than the toothed area; tricuspid (sometimes quadri- or pentacuspid) posterior pharyngeal teeth that are never broadened into crest-like cusps; two unconnected lateral lines; cycloid scales only; bicuspid outer and tricuspid inner jaw teeth; and branched vertical bars on the flanks. From its near-twin Coptodon rheophilus it is told apart by a smaller eye (7.5–7.6 % of standard length vs 8.0–10.7 %), a shorter predorsal distance, a longer dorsal-fin base and a shorter pectoral fin. These are fine measurements rather than colours: the species is little-photographed (FishBase carries no image), so it is identified by proportion and counts, not by a distinctive pattern.
Habitat
Coptodon konkourensis is a freshwater, demersal fish, and on present knowledge a strict endemic of the middle Konkouré River and its tributary the Kakrima, in Guinea. The describers read its body plan as an ecological signal: 'the very slender body in combination with a rounded head shape and slightly retrognathous jaws suggests that it is a benthic-rheophilic species, modified for life in rapids.' In other words, its anatomy is its habitat statement — a fish shaped to hold position and feed on the bottom in fast, rocky, turbulent water. The Konkouré drains the Fouta Djallon highlands of Guinea through a steep, rapids-strewn course (Fouta Djallon freshwater ecoregion, FEOW), the classic setting for small rheophilic cichlid endemics, and konkourensis shares that water with its relative Coptodon rheophilus.
No dedicated field study of its microhabitat preferences — exact substrate, flow velocity, depth — has been published beyond the inferences in the original description. What is clear is that, like several Konkouré fishes, it is a narrow-range rapids specialist tied to a single drainage that has been a focus of hydropower development.
Feeding
No direct dietary study of Coptodon konkourensis has been published; FishBase records no quantified diet and gives an estimated trophic level of about 2.7, derived from body size and the diets of relatives rather than from gut contents. The genus Coptodon is broadly herbivorous and detritivorous, and a slender, bottom-living rheophile of rocky rapids would most plausibly graze the algal and biofilm growth ('aufwuchs') coating stones in fast water, together with the small invertebrates living in it. The species' slightly retrognathous (under-shot) jaws and rounded head, noted by the describers as rapids adaptations, are consistent with a fish that works close over the substrate. All of this is inference from morphology and the genus, however; the actual feeding ecology of konkourensis has not been documented, and the trophic figure is modelled rather than measured.
Mating
Coptodon konkourensis has not had its reproductive behaviour observed or described — the original description is concerned with morphology, distribution and the species' status relative to Coptodon rheophilus, not with breeding. Its placement among the substrate-spawning Coptodon means it is expected to be a pair-bonding, biparental spawner rather than a mouthbrooder, since that reproductive mode is consistent across the genus and is one of the traits that defines Coptodon against the mouthbrooding food-tilapias. In the genus pattern a male and female form a bonded pair and jointly defend a nest territory. But for konkourensis specifically, courtship, pair formation and territorial behaviour are simply unrecorded; the expectation rests entirely on genus membership rather than on any observation of this fish.
Breeding
Nothing is documented about the breeding of Coptodon konkourensis. By genus membership it is expected to be a biparental open-substrate spawner — laying adhesive eggs on a cleaned surface or in a cleared depression, with both parents guarding the brood through to free-swimming fry — but no spawning of this species has been observed, in the wild or in captivity, and no clutch size, egg data, spawning season or fry-development information exists for it. The original 2012 description, the principal source on the species, does not treat reproduction. The honest summary is that konkourensis is confidently assigned to the substrate-spawning lineage on anatomical and phylogenetic grounds, but its actual breeding biology is entirely unstudied.
In the aquarium
Coptodon konkourensis is unknown in the aquarium hobby. Described only in 2012 from a small type series, it is not a trade species, has no aquarium-strain history, and exists in the literature essentially as a wild, type-specimen taxon; there is no keeper experience to report.
Any husbandry comment is therefore purely inferential. Were specimens ever to be kept, the dominant requirement would be flow: this is a small, slender, rapids-adapted fish, so a fast-water biotope setup — strong current, high oxygenation, a substrate of sand with rounded cobbles, and warm tropical temperatures — would be the logical model, as for other rheophilic West African cichlids. Its small adult size (under 3.5 in) would make it, in principle, a more tank-manageable cichlid than the larger Coptodon, though as a substrate spawner it would likely still show territorial behaviour around breeding. These remarks are extrapolations from its morphology and habitat, not tested practice; in reality the species is a recently described Guinean endemic with no aquarium presence at all.
Conservation
Coptodon konkourensis has not been assessed by the IUCN Red List — its status is Not Evaluated — so it has no formal extinction-risk category. As with several of its Konkouré neighbours, that gap is conspicuous given the fish's profile: a tiny, rapids-specialist cichlid apparently endemic to a single river system (the middle Konkouré and its Kakrima tributary) in the Guinean highlands. The Konkouré has been heavily developed for hydropower, and dams, flow regulation and habitat fragmentation are the pressures that bear most directly on narrow-range rheophilic endemics, which cannot simply move elsewhere when their rapids are altered. Without a dedicated assessment, any statement about its true status would be speculation; what can be said with confidence is that it is a very recently described, single-drainage endemic of a modified river, for which population and threat data are lacking and an IUCN evaluation is clearly warranted. It carries no CITES listing and is of no fishery interest.