Re: NANFA-L-- Collins River Collecting + Nothonotus

matt ashton (ashtonmj2003 at yahoo.com)
Fri, 7 Oct 2005 11:31:52 -0700 (PDT)

You just mentioned the other fish on my I have to see this soon list! (Saffron Shiner). Great pictures too. Is that unknown a phenacobius or was already solved ....

Speaking of Nothonotus systematics....have you read a just out publication by Near and Keck in Molecular Ecology? Good stuff. Prof I got it from said there is some rumbling about Nothonotus being elevated to genus status.

That site does sound familiar. If I can get one warm weekend towrads the end of the month I am there. It's been "said" that there are a few places to see ashy darters at and so far im skunked. I've done a few trips this summer for my research to the US 411 site that Etnier and Starnes reference as being one of the highest concentrations of them, along with up and downstream of that extensively, and seen nothing. In fact I've found about every darter possible BUT ashy's....dusky, wounded, tangerine, duskytail, blotchside logperch, and everything else possible, I think 13 in all, and no ashy. One was seen in the Emory last year by someone here, but none this year too.

"Todd D. Crail" <tcrail at UTNet.UToledo.Edu> wrote:
I can appreciate the greenfin. I had really hoped to get to see one last
Thanksgiving when were in Cades Cove around the Smokies. It had rained
really hard and I never was able to get into the mainstem of the Pigeon or
the Little River, for that matter. Which was fine... I ended up finding
some sweet localities for saffron shiners, and it totally rocked to be
getting redline and snubs 100 yards away from one of the helicopter launches
and behind Kroger in Pigeon Forge :)

In any case... I used darter head shapes (finch beaks are so over rated) to
teach my lab on systematics and phylogeny. I made sure the Nothonotus head
shape had a sinister grin, like he knew something the other head shapes
didn't ;)

The locality is the Shelbyville Dam right where SR64, SR10 and US 231 go
across the Duck. There's a city park there and you can pull right down by
the river on the gravel left below the dam. _Really_ ugly site with
_really_ spectacular fish. We caught about a half dozen coppercheeks with a
seine in early spring when we weren't real adventurous to get out in the
faster water. I'd imagine that signals a comparatively large population as
we only saw them in hauls when we really pushed the limits of safety.

http://www.farmertodd.com/nanfa/springfling2005/Darter_Coppercheek.jpg
http://www.farmertodd.com/nanfa/springfling2005/Jeff/Darter_Coppercheek.jpg

It's also been said that this is a good place to see ashy darter with a
snorkel. It looked like there were limestone ridges out in the channel
forming a deep pool which we didn't go near in our waders with spring
discharge, but you'd be far more mobile with a snorkel in lower flow, and
might get a looky at one. Also a huge population of blenny darter at this
site. Can't think of any other endemics. Well... There's that cf.
Ulocentra. It was, of course, littered with redlines and speckled darter.
I wish I had my list here... I think we saw 12 species of darter at that
site. It was something impressive. It was a 20 something species list and
nearly half of them were darters.

Todd

----- Original Message -----
From: "matt ashton"

>
> Did you find the Coppercheeks at that locale? I figured that would be one
of the more harder to find Nothonotus' for me even with spending so much
time on the Duck. I've probably seen them too with as much mussel
snorkeling as I've done there this year and not known it. If I knew a place
though I'm heading out there soon.
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