There Are Always New Species At The Flint...
And today we saw two, the whitetail shiner and the dusky darter. When I first saw the dusky I was convinced it was a blotchside logperch. But when I got back to my office and looked at the pictures I realized it didn't have the long snout of a logperch; I was fixated on the blotches. So, after 7 months at this location we found our first dusky darter, Percina maculata. It's a fairly widespread species, but seems to be uncommon in rivers on the north side of the Tennessee. Now we can say that it is indeed found in the Flint River east of Huntsville. Here are the two best pictures:
posted by Bruce Stallsmith @ 9:36 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Cool.
BlackBanded's cousin.
I bet you caught in near overhanging debris. Once while snorkeling a small creek in Flintstone i observed a school of tiny ones, all up in a submerged root structure.
So what is your total species count?
Casper
Yes, we found it in a pool against the bank under exposed roots. To date we've found 9 darter species at this site: Dusky, Greenside, Banded, Rainbow, Black, Redline, Stripetail, Fantail, Logperch. The most abundant, in order, are Banded, Black, Redline, Rainbow. And they have very distinct habitat partitioning, with Bandeds and Greensides in the fastest water, Redlines in slightly shallower and slightly slower water, Rainbows in flowing shllow water over sand/gravel, and Blacks, Stripetails and Fantails in slow water along the shore especially near emergent plants.
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