Critically Endangered
Dalhousie goby
Chlamydogobius gloveri
The Dalhousie goby is a goby endemic to Australia where it lives in the Dalhousie Springs.
Appearance
Generally, the fish has a light grey, almost silver sheen. In comparison to other desert gobies, their colouring is more muted. Only reaching the length of approximately 4.5 cm to 6 cm, it is a small fish that has approximately two dorsal fins, fifteen vertebrae and fifteen caudal fin rays.
This species can reach a standard length of 4.5 centimetres (1.8 in).
Range and habitat
The Dalhousie Goby is endemic to the Dalhousie Springs, located in Witjira National Park in South Australia. It is the smallest of the five species that are endemic to the Dalhousie Springs. Because the Springs are an enclosed system covering approximately 200 square meters, the development of the fish is unique and has largely been undisturbed by other non native fish species.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
The Dalhousie Gobies are benthic spawners that lay eggs rather than give birth to live young. Their breeding season occurs during the Australian summer months.
The majority of their diet consists of thread-like algae. The number of eggs deposited has been estimated through a comparison with the breeding habits of the Chlamydogobius eremius, a species of goby that lays approximately 150 to 300 eggs.
In crisis
Once assessed again in 2019 by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, its status was changed to critically endangered. As of July 2024, it is listed as critically endangered under the EBPC Act. Threats to the species include boring in their habitat, human activity, landscape disturbance through excavation, foreign flora and fauna invasion, livestock disturbance and tourism.
The Dalhousie Goby is considered critically endangered due to the impacts of these threats but also because they can only be found in the Springs. The South Australian Government aims to control the threat posed by foreign flora and fauna.
Dalhousie goby is Critically 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 English Wikipedia article on Dalhousie goby, Wikidata item Q306944. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
