Flame Chub Update

I've been visiting sites around north Alabama for the last year now, going to streams where flame chubs (Hemitremia flammea) have been found and a record made of it at the University of Alabama Ichthyological Collection in Tuscaloosa. So far I've visited 25 of those sites with students helping me, from a total of 151 on the list. We found at least a single flame chub at 7 of those sites, but only a single flame chub at 4 of them. That's pretty bad. In the professional literature, it's considered bad if a species has had a 30% range reduction, and so far I've observed a 72% range reduction.

We've visited all or most of the listed sites in Jackson, Madison and Limestone counties along the northern tier of Alabama. At the end of the month I start another Friday collecting schedule, with three students who have signed up for credit to cruise around with me on county roads all day. We'll focus on what's left to visit in Limestone county and move to Lauderdale county in the northwest corner of the state, around Muscle Shoals. This area includes the Shoal Creek system, which is a relatively undisturbed, diverse drainage system. I would expect to find flame chubs at some of these historic sites, but we'll see.

The good news is that I've found flame chubs at three sites that are not in my UAIC list. The one healthy population is in Little Paint Rock Creek in Marshall County, halfway between Huntsville and Guntersville up the Tennessee. I've found singletons in Limestone Creek at Highway 53 in Madison County, and in French Mill Creek at Cambridge Lane southeast of Athens in Limestone county. So there are undoubtedly small pockets of flame chubs around. But when you seine a creek with several people for several hours and only find one individual of a minnow species, that's a pretty good sign that there aren't bunches of them present.