Biodiversity Blog

Friday, 14 May 2021

Featured Species: Slenderhead Darter (Percina phoxocephala)

by Melissa Casarez and Adam Cohen (Ichthyology Collection)   Illustration: Joseph Tomelleri   The Slenderhead Darter occurs throughout the Mississippi River basin, and only exists in Texas in tributaries of the Red River.  It was first documented in TX in 1994 by UT biologists Laurie Dries and David Hillis in Sanders Creek, a...

Friday, 03 July 2020

The Texas Trout

Today the only member of the family Salmonidae (trout, salmon and their relatives) that occurs in Texas is the non-native Rainbow Trout Oncorhynchus mykiss. That species is widely stocked around the state and there is one permanent population in McKittrick Creek, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, where it was introduced in the early 1900s. However...

Monday, 27 January 2020

Mis-Stocking Mayhem: The Hunt for Invasive Gobies in the Colorado River Basin

By: Adam Zambie (undergraduate student; College of Natural Sciences; Environmental Science Major and Marine Science Certificate)   Naked Goby (Gobiosoma bosc), source: FoTX Project Website, credit: Joseph R. Tomelleri Texas has a long history of non-native fish introductions into its rivers, streams, and lakes. Many are improbable st...