Thusly "Amateur Cichlids" Spake Unto All:

First let me start on the Neolamprologus genus. In 1998 Konings published
Tanganyika Cichlids in their natural habitats. He sites the work of Stiassny
who did a study on almost all the Lamprologine species. The type species for
Neolamprologus is the N. tetracanthus. It lacks ossified cartilidge in it's
lower jaw which is found in many of the other Lamprologines. It was then
concluded that any Lamprologine species that had the ossified cartilidge was
no longer part of the Neolamprologus group.

Stiassny seems to have had a change of heart, or been misquoted by
Konings.

I got hold of the N. devosi article (it appears you can download
Zootaxa articles for free if you find it via Google instead of via
their back-catalog. Quite possibly against Zootaxas intentions, but at
least I got the article), and Schelly, Stiassny & Seegers (2003)
define Neolamprologus thus:

"we follow the phenetic classification of Poll (1986) who placed
within the genus Neolamprologus all lamprologines in which the first
pelvic ray is the longest in the fin (in contrast to the condition in
Lamprologus sensu Poll, in which the second or third pelvic ray is the
longest), and which lack the defining characters of Chalinochromis,
Julidochromis, Telmatochromis, Altolamprologus, and
Lepidiolamprologus."

(If nothing else that definition sure highlights how artificial the
classification of lamprologines in general, and
Lamprologus/Neolamprologus in particuar, is!)

Schelly et al also expressly lists brevis as a member of
Neolamprologus, not Lamprologus.

Wrt my original question, Schelly et al clearly consider brevis and
calliurus to be separate species.

All in all, I think someone at Fishbase has gotten something wrong.

That seems increasingly likely to be the case, yes. Certainly it is
incorrect to cite Schelly et al, 2003, as source for synonymizing
brevis and calliurus. It is puzzling that both Eschmeyer Catalog of
Fishes and Fishbase make the same error, but they may have influenced
eachother.