Parotocinclus is a genus of fish in the family Loricariidae native to South America.

This genus is distributed through almost all hydrographic systems in South America from the Guyana Shield drainages and Amazon Shield tributaries to the coastal drainages of eastern and southeastern Brazil, including the rio São Francisco basin.

The small Characidium will follow grazing P. maculicauda, which release particulate matter dislodged from the catfish's foraging.

P. jumbo is not closely related to P. maculicauda, but is positioned, instead, as a basal lineage of the subfamily Hypoptopomatinae.

[4] P. bidentatus and P. muriaensis form a monophyletic pair of sister taxa that is more closely related to a subset of species of Parotocinclus (which includes P. maculicauda) than to any other genus of the tribe Otothyrini.