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Darter- Orangethroat or Rainbow?

Started by Guest_Newt_* , Jan 17 2008 02:17 PM

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24 replies to this topic

#1 Guest_Newt_*

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Posted 17 January 2008 - 02:17 PM

And how can you tell? He's from a tributary to the lower Tennessee.

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#2 Guest_tglassburner_*

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Posted 17 January 2008 - 02:26 PM

Can you get a good picture of the anal fin?
I know thats an easy way to tell.

Tom

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#3 Guest_Newt_*

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Posted 17 January 2008 - 02:31 PM

Can you get a good picture of the anal fin?
I know thats an easy way to tell.

Tom

This pic is the best I've got. I didn't catch him, this is an in situ shot.

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#4 Guest_tglassburner_*

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Posted 17 January 2008 - 02:32 PM

This pic is the best I've got. I didn't catch him, this is an in situ shot.

Got it! I'll leave it to the experts to ID.

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#5 Guest_smbass_*

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Posted 17 January 2008 - 03:37 PM

For future reference and anal fin shot is very helpful for seperating these two (well the orange throat is now several species). Orangethroats will have no red or orange pigment on the anal fin (only blue) and rainbows will have red or orange with the blue. Of course this only works with males, but typically thats what people take pics of anyways. I think your fish is a rainbow just based on a quick glance it does not look like an orangethroat but I'm not sure how to quantify that any further.

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#6 Guest_ashtonmj_*

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Posted 17 January 2008 - 03:41 PM

I hate to say it but the only "orangethroats" are in western TN in tribs that connect to the Mississippi. All other E. spectabile were redescribed several years ago and where you got the fish is extremely important. In Cookeville we would go 15 minutes north and get one species and 15 minutes west and get another because we jumped drainages....I don't think it is a member of that E. spectabile complex though, don't need to see the anal fin any clearer than it is there is enough other visual evidence (dorsal fin coloration, body depth). My fishes of TN book isn't in my office, and there are updates in the very back and I've personally updated that page so if someone doesn't get to it now I can for you later. Or go onto Natureserve and look for fish in your watershed, though I guess it wouldn't help if you didn't recognize the name. Where in the lower Tennessee, like Duck or further downstream? - E. bison Buffalo darter if that area.

Edit: typo led to mis-ID originally

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#7 Guest_Newt_*

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Posted 17 January 2008 - 04:02 PM

Man, it sounds like darters are as bad as plethodontid salamanders! :laugh:

This guy was in the Bear Creek system in Humphreys County, TN- just a few miles north of the Duck River, but flowing into the Tennessee downstream of its confluence with the Duck.

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#8 Guest_ashtonmj_*

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Posted 17 January 2008 - 04:09 PM

Around you, you have no idea brother...greatest two years of my life as far as I'm concerned just because of the darters.

So yes there are rainbows in that area and the "orangethroats" would be bison...

If you were that close to the Duck mainstem that furthers the case for it to be a rainbow darter. The spectabile members in Tennessee are really far up the drainage basins. I typically only observed a small range of overlap, say in the small 3rd order large 2nd streams, but above that, the rainbows disappear.

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#9 Guest_Newt_*

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Posted 17 January 2008 - 04:17 PM

I guess I wasn't clear- the stream is not actually in the Duck drainage, it's just near it. It's quite close to the Tennessee mainstem, though. The actual stream he was in was the run below a limnocrene spring (Crystal Spring)- it flows into Bear Creek, which is at most a third order stream, and Bear Creek flows directly into the Tennessee.

Here are the coordinates if you want to take a look at it on TopoZone: 36.1120°N, 87.9017°W

But- he's still probably a rainbow, right? And that's still E. caeruleum?

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#10 Guest_smbass_*

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Posted 17 January 2008 - 04:19 PM

ashtonmj, what makes you think it is an orangethroat? Just curious, like I said my first glance thought was rainbow but that was just a quick glance now I'm going back and trying to see what your seeing. I think what I saw is the very dark sadles, I don't recal orangethroats haveing well defined saddles like that, but then again I don't have any pics in front of me right now.

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#11 Guest_Newt_*

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Posted 17 January 2008 - 04:22 PM

ashtonmj, what makes you think it is an orangethroat? Just curious, like I said my first glance thought was rainbow but that was just a quick glance now I'm going back and trying to see what your seeing. I think what I saw is the very dark sadles, I don't recal orangethroats haveing well defined saddles like that, but then again I don't have any pics in front of me right now.

I think he said that my darter wasn't an orangethroat, it was just buried in all that info about orangethroats! :laugh:

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#12 Guest_ashtonmj_*

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Posted 17 January 2008 - 04:29 PM

Brian,

I originally said it was an orangethroat but meant to say "Isn't" so I edited my comment and made the explination, I agreed with you all along.

That part of the lower Tennessee drainage still should be E. bison for orangethroats (not this specimen just stating) whether it's Duck or Buffalo or Lower TN.

Edit - (felt need to include witty comment) Brian you know my name, you worked for me for like 5 months for God sakes......

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#13 Guest_Newt_*

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Posted 17 January 2008 - 04:32 PM

Brian,

I originally said it was an orangethroat but meant to say "Isn't" so I edited my comment and made the explination, I agreed with you all along.

That part of the lower Tennessee drainage still should be E. bison for orangethroats (not this specimen just stating) whether it's Duck or Buffalo or Lower TN.

Gotcha. Thank you very much!

By the way- what species are Cumberland drainage orangethroats?

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#14 Guest_fundulus_*

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Posted 17 January 2008 - 04:42 PM

It's a rainbow, based morphologically primarily on the three basicaudal spots (and location...). And the first dorsal's color pattern, blue as the major outer (distal) band, is also rainbow.

As to what formerly spectabile species are which now, I honestly couldn't tell you; wasn't Pat Ceas behind much of that?

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#15 Guest_smbass_*

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Posted 17 January 2008 - 04:51 PM

Edit - (felt need to include witty comment) Brian you know my name, you worked for me for like 5 months for God sakes......

Ya I know not sure why I did that Matt, I must have read before your edit and got confused...

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#16 Guest_Newt_*

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Posted 17 January 2008 - 05:00 PM

It's a rainbow, based morphologically primarily on the three basicaudal spots (and location...). And the first dorsal's color pattern, blue as the major outer (distal) band, is also rainbow.

As to what formerly spectabile species are which now, I honestly couldn't tell you; wasn't Pat Ceas behind much of that?

Thanks for the diagnostic info!

I found a paper by Ceas and Page on the E. spectabile complex (Copeia 1997 (3):496-522). Unfortunately, they left the Cumberland populations undescribed!

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#17 Guest_Newt_*

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Posted 17 January 2008 - 05:18 PM

So this guy is E. spectabile complex, right? He's from the lower Cumberland drainage.

Posted Image

Sorry, I know it's kind of a crummy photo.

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#18 Guest_ashtonmj_*

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Posted 17 January 2008 - 05:36 PM

Yeah it was pat ceas' work. I have it somewhere when we talked about this on the list about two years ago and he sent me some pdf's. There are E. bison that is the lower TN and DUck and Buffalow, E. ihiyo which is the Cumberland to the Caney fork, E. lawrenci that the Cumberland upstream of the Caney (Roaring River, Obey, Big South Fork, etc.) and E. katunckeense which is the that way northern part where the Barren River (Green/Ohio) comes in. E. spectabile is found in Miss. Riv. tribs. I can scan in my map if you want, I just hand drew the lines and labels into my fishes of TN (took me about 5 minutes to scribble).

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#19 Guest_Newt_*

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Posted 17 January 2008 - 05:43 PM

Yeah it was pat ceas' work. I have it somewhere when we talked about this on the list about two years ago and he sent me some pdf's. There are E. bison that is the lower TN and DUck and Buffalow, E. ihiyo which is the Cumberland to the Caney fork, E. lawrenci that the Cumberland upstream of the Caney (Roaring River, Obey, Big South Fork, etc.) and E. katunckeense which is the that way northern part where the Barren River (Green/Ohio) comes in. E. spectabile is found in Miss. Riv. tribs. I can scan in my map if you want, I just hand drew the lines and labels into my fishes of TN (took me about 5 minutes to scribble).

Yeah, if you could scan in that map that would be great. Have the descriptions of E. ihiyo and E. lawrencei been published yet? I couldn't find any papers on them online.

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#20 Guest_ashtonmj_*

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Posted 17 January 2008 - 05:49 PM

mmmm Ceas and Burr 2002 I believe, but ihiyo is undescribed last I recall....

Ceas, P. A., and B. M. Burr. 2002. Etheostoma lawrencei, a new species of darter in the E. spectabile species complex (Percidae: subgenus Oligocephalus), from Kentucky and Tennessee. Ichthyological Exploration of Freshwaters 13:203-216.