9 replies to this topic

[mattknepley]

Is there enough in this picture to make a call?

Seined up from the Oolenoy River in Pickens County, South Carolina. Has very definite barbels.

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This is the only picture for now, the fish was seriously stressing.

[mattknepley]

Hoping for some help on this one. My two "go to" guides have similar descriptions, but for the different fish. That is, what one describes as C. labrosa, the other describes as C. zanema. And vice versa. Throwing in the additional info found for each fish that appears in one guide but not the other only further confuses things. Add to it that Rhinichthys cataractae - looking schnoz (which is one drainage over, though) and I'm at a loss...

[Dustin]

That's zanema.  Those two blotches near the dorsal and the overall coloration are indicative.  I assume you also caught approximately a million "yellowfin" shiners and bluehead chubs in there?

[mattknepley]

Thanks, Dustin. I initially thought zanema, but then started overthinking. Never good. Actually, I only got a couple "yellowplox"es and a handful of blueheads. If not for this lifer it'd been a total bust. But I never got far from the bridge at Oolenoy Church Rd. It was very sandy without much structure. Then thunderstorms hit and put an end to things.

[Dustin]

I have been there but at Sliding Rock Rd and caught tons of fish.

[Matt DeLaVega]

How in the world is that a cyprinella?

[mattknepley]

How in the world is that a cyprinella?

It doesn't fit my preconceived notion of what a Cyprinella is either. According to Fritz, it was a Hybopsis not very long ago but "work by Coburn and Cavender (1992) and Broughton and Gold (2000) has supported [moving it] to the genus Cyprinella".

Thanks for the tip, Dustin. That area upstream was more what I had in mind when I headed out there from Greenville. (Work has had me up there most every day for a while now, but this was the only day where I actually had any free time before having to head back to Ninety Six.) But the storms started blowing up quick so I took the first decent-looking entry I could find.

[sbtgrfan]

Hey I was just there yesterday for my work upstate collecting trip. Water levels were low, weather was perfect, fish were plentiful, except fieryblacks in the middle Saluda....
I never came across any of those though. Strictly yellowfins, blueheads and seagreens for me.

[gerald]

I've never caught zanema either.   I've seen labrosa a few times in Catawba, Broad & Yadkin tribs in NC.  Always just 1 or 2 at a time, in mixed schools with other shiners.  Nope they sure dont look like "typical" Cyprinella of eastern & mid-west states, but if you've seen some of the TX Cyprinella like proserpina, they look sort of intermediate between a "typical" Cyprinella shiner and those ex-Hybopsis chub-Cyprinellas.

[Matt DeLaVega]

I suspect in 20 years the Santee chub might enjoy a genus of its own. I am having a hard time with it being a Cyprinella, no matter how much wiser the taxonomists who put it there are than I. Hybopsis seems much more correct. "Chub cyprinella" just seems wrong.

 

I know there are reasons for this being moved, but visually it just seems so wrong. Can anyone offer up some history, or info on this?