Endangered
Crimean Spined Loach
Cobitis taurica
Crimean Spined Loach is a loach in the family Cobitidae (order Cypriniformes) — Cobitis taurica, recorded as Endangered and tied to Ukraine.
The loach
Spined loaches are slender bottom fishes of streams and lakes. They burrow in sand or silt and taste the water with barbels.
Carps, minnows, and loaches. They lack jaw teeth and live in freshwater.
Range and habitat
It only occurs in one section of the Tschorna. This river, about 34 kilometers long, runs entirely within the territory of the city of Sevastopol on the Ukrainian Crimean Peninsula.
GBIF currently lists 17 occurrence points. Those points follow where people logged the taxon — museum drawers and surveys included — not a closed range boundary.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
In crisis
Crimean Spined Loach is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the German Wikipedia article on Cobitis taurica, translated and retold in English, plus Wikidata item Q3768449 and GBIF occurrence geography. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Confirm status and range on iucnredlist.org.
