Re: NANFA-- conservation status of SE fishes

DasArm_at_aol.com
Sat, 7 Oct 2000 23:13:44 EDT

In a message dated 10/4/00 6:34:34 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
ichthos_at_charm.net writes:

<< An article on the conservation status of 662 species of southeast fishes
has
just appeared in the October issue of Fisheries, however you do not have to
be
an American Fisheries Society member to read it. A pdf of the entire article

--
 including the excellent color photos -- is available at:
 
 http://www.fisheries.org/fisheries/FISHOct07-29.pdf
  >>

This article states that the southern U.S. has more native fishes than any other area of comparative size north of Mexico. What then is the part of North America (the Nearctic part) which has the most native fishes? Obviously it's in Mexico,but which part; northern or central? Just curious about which part of North America has the most native fish species.

I must say that I was impressed with the diversity of fish species shown for the Southeast, as well as the fact that there are new species being scientifically recognized there all of the time. The possibility of this happening in my state intrigues me as well.

I was surprised to read of the Charcharhinidae being infrequent visitors to southern U.S. fresh waters. I was under the impression that they entered them fairly often, especially since I thought that I had read about bull sharks being in Illinois? or the Illinois river?-one of the 2 areas. That and opposum pipefish; I had previously read from my Audubon guide that Gulf pipefish were the only American pipefish that entered fresh water.

That grotto sculpin was cool and weird-looking, even for a sculpin ( which are a weird-looking group of fishes to begin with. I never knew that there were cave-dwelling sculpins in the U.S.; I thought that the only grouups of fishes that were cave-dwelling in the U.S. were cavefishes and certain species of catfishes.

The photo of the rosyside dace was beautiful; I've never seen any pictures of them before. And of course, the darter pics were cool too.

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