Haines, G. Bruce

Modde, Timothy

BYU ScholarsArchive (Brigham Young University)

Great Basin Naturalist Volume 56 Number 3 Article 14 7-26-1996 Brook stickleback (Culaea inconstans), a new addition to the Upper Colorado River Basin fish fauna Timothy Modde U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Vernal, Utah G. Bruce Haines U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Vernal, Utah Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/gbn Recommended Citation Modde, Timothy and Haines, G. Bruce (1996) "Brook stickleback (Culaea inconstans), a new addition to the Upper Colorado River Basin fish fauna," Great Basin Naturalist: Vol. 56 : No. 3 , Article 14. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/gbn/vol56/iss3/14 This Note is brought to you for free and open access by the Western North American Naturalist Publications at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Basin Naturalist by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact scholarsarchive@byu.edu, ellen_amatangelo@byu.edu. Great Basin Naturalist 56(3), © 1996, pp. 281-282BROOK STICKLEBACK (CULAEA INCONSTANS [KIRTLAND 1841]),A NEW ADDITION TO THE UPPER COLORADORIVER BASIN FISH FAUNATimothy Modde l and G. Bruce Haines lKey words: brook stickleback, range extension, nonnative.Brook stickleback (Culaea inconstans) is asmall gasterosteid fish native to Arctic andAtlantic drainages in North America. Thespecies native range extends west from NovaScotia to British Columbia and south from theNorthwest Territories to southern Ohio drain-ages, including the Mississippi-Missouri Riverabove the confluence of the Illinois River(Scott and Crossman 1973). Hubbs and Lagler(1958) reported brook stickleback from theIllinois River in Illinois and the Missouri Riverin Kansas. Historical accounts exist of relictualpopulations in the Platte River system, butCross (1967) noted its absence from Kansas.An isolated, and presumably relict, populationoccurs in the Canadian River drainage of NewMexico (Koster 1957). Brook stickleback hasbeen collected outside its native range inAlabama (Boschung 1992), Kentucky (Burr andWarren 1986), Tennessee (Etnier and Starnes1993), the Rio Grande River drainage in NewMexico (Sublette et al. 1990), Colorado (Zuck-erman and Behnke 1986), and the KlamathRiver, California (Peter Moyle, University ofCalifornia, Davis, personal communication).Between July and October 1995 we col-lected 5 brook stickleback from the middleGreen River, Uintall County, Utah, the 1st rec-ord for the species in Utah (catalog numberLFL 24871, Larval Fish Laboratory, ColoradoState University). Brook stickleback was firstreported elsewhere in the upper ColoradoRiver drainage in 3 small tributaries of the ElkRiver (South, Coleman, and Deep creeks) innorthwestern Colorado in 1993 (Jake Bennett,Colorado Division of Wildlife, personal com-munication).One brook stickleback juvenile, 27 mmtotal length (TL), was collected 18 July 1995 ina quatrefoil light trap at the outlet of OldCharley Wash, river kilometer (RK)· 402 on theGreen River (RK measured from the conflu-ence of the Green and Colorado rivers). Fouradult fish, (41, 46, 48, 54 mm TL) were col-lected between 1 October and 12 October 1995from Old Charley Wash, a wetland on theOuray National Wildlife Refuge thlt connectsto the Green River during high sdring flows.Fish were collected when the w~tland wasdrained (Modde in press); all were found inlow or no velocity habitats. !Tyus et al. (1982) cited the establishment of42 nonnative fishes in the upper Colorado Rivercompared to 13 native species. Brook stickle-back is an additional transplanted species, prob-ably the result of human introduction ratherthan a natural range extension. Brook stickle-back introductions elsewhere in the UnitedStates were presumably through bait buckettransfers or contaminated game fish stockings(Zuckerman and Behnke 1986, Sublette etal.1990).LITERATURE CITEDBOSCHUNG, H. T. 1992. Catalogue of freshwater and marinefishes ofAlabama. Alabama Museum of Natural His-tory Bulletin 14:1-266.BURR, B. M., AND M. L. WARREN, JR.. 1986. A distribu-tional atlas of Kentucky fishes. Kentucky Nature Pre-serves Commission Scientific and Technical Series,No.4.CROSS, F. B. 1967. Handbook offishes of Kansas. State Bio-logical Survey and the University of Kansas Museumof Natural History, Lawrence.ETNIER, D. A., AND W C. STAR.'lES. 1993. The fishes ofTen-nessee. The University ofTennessee Prt~SS, Knoxville.HUBBS, C. L., AND K. F. LAGLER. 1958. Fishes of the GreatLakes region. The University of Michigan Press,Ann Arbor.lColorado River Fish Project, U.S, Fish and Wildlife Service, 266 West 100 North, Suite #2. Vernal, UT 84078.281282 GREAT BASIN NATURALIST [Volume 56KOSTER, w: J. 1957. Guide to the fishes of New Mexico.University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.MODDE, T. In press. Juvenile razorback sucker in a man-aged wetland adjacent to the Green River. GreatBasin Naturalist.SCOTI', w: B., AND E. J. CROSSMAN. 1973. Fishes of Canada.Fisheries Research Board of Canada Bulletin 184.SUBLEITE, J. E., M. 0. HATCH, AND M. SUBLEITE. 1990.The fishes of New Mexico. University of New Mex-ico Press, Albuquerque.TYus, H. M., B. D. BURDICK, R. A. VALDEZ, C. M. HAYNES,T. A. LYTLE, AND C. R. BERRY. 1982. Fishes of theUpper Colorado River Basin: distribution, abundance,and status. Pages 12-70 in w: H. Miller, H. M. Tyus,and C. A. Carlson, editors, Fishes of the Upper Col-orado River System: present and future. AmericanFisheries Society, Bethesda, MD.ZUCKERMAN, L. D., AND R. J. BEHNKE. 1986. Introducedfish in the San Luis Valley, Colorado. Pages 435-452in R. H. Stroud, editor. Role offish culture in fisherymanagement. American Fisheries Society, Bethesda,MD.Received 4 January 1996Accepted 12 April 1996

Brook stickleback (\u3ci\u3eCulaea inconstans\u3c/i\u3e), a new addition to the Upper Colorado River Basin fish fauna

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Brook stickleback (\u3ci\u3eCulaea inconstans\u3c/i\u3e), a new addition to the Upper Colorado River Basin fish fauna

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