Not the prettiest

I stumbled upon this sculpin while I was collecting darters for my aquarium. I have always been fascinated by the way some fish rapidly change colors.

Light phase


Dark phase

Neat fish, to bad I dont have them here in Louisiana

Nice pics and fish! Do you know what species it is? We don't have too many sculpin species here in Wisconsin.

Brian

There are 2 native in the etowah watershed where I found this one, C. Bairdii (Mottled), and C. Carolinae (Banded). However they look so similar I don't know how to tell them apart.

There are 2 native in the etowah watershed where I found this one, C. Bairdii (Mottled), and C. Carolinae (Banded). However they look so similar I don't know how to tell them apart.

Part of the problem is that neither of those two species occurs in the Etowah. There's a "subspecies" of Cottus carolinae (originally described in 1877 as "Cottus" zopherus but later and unnecessarily synonymized with carolinae) in the lower portion of the drainage (offf the Blue Ridge), and an undescribed critter in the upper portion of the drainage. This undescribed thing is what you've got. Both of them usually have complete lateral lines, but zopherus typically has a more slender caudal peduncle, more pectoral fin rays, and less orange in the 1st dorsal fin of nuptial males (along with a bunch of other characters). Folks have known about the new sculpin since the 1950s, and it's been unofficially referred to as the Smoky sculpin since then, but as it turns out there's more one thing within Smoky sculpins... I'm finishing up descriptions of these species, hopefully have something out very soon. There's some recent photos from GA in my section of the NANFA Gallery, and I'll be heading out later this week to get more. Hope this clarifies things a bit.

there's also a pretty slick paper by Andrew Whiteley et al. in upcoming issue of Evolution discussing rapid change in ground color in Coastrange sculpins. Well worth a read.

wow thanks for the info. I have some reading to do.