Endangered
Death Valley pupfish
Cyprinodon salinus
Death Valley pupfish is a ray-finned fish in the family Cyprinodontidae (order Cyprinodontiformes) — Cyprinodon salinus, recorded as Endangered and tied to United States.
Appearance
The Death Valley pupfish is a small, silvery colored fish with 6–9 vertical dark bands on its sides.
It has an average length of 3.7 cm (1.5 in), with a recorded maximum of 7.8 cm (3.1 in).
Range and habitat
The Salt Creek subspecies is also found at River Springs and Soda Lake, in Death Valley National Park. The Death Valley pupfish, also known as Salt Creek pupfish, is a small species of fish in the family Cyprinodontidae found only in Death Valley National Park, California, United States. The Death Valley pupfish is endemic to two small, isolated locations and currently classified as endangered.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
In the winter, its diet primarily consists of diatoms, while in the summer it eats spirogyra.
In crisis
The Death Valley pupfish has been classified as endangered by the IUCN because of its extremely restricted distribution (if the two extant locations were treated as a single unit, it would be considered critically endangered). Numbers of individuals at the locations are highly seasonally variable, and fluctuate with water level and flow volume. While the entire range of the species is located in a protected area, it may be under threat from accidental introduction of non-native species, local catastrophic events, and excessive pumping of the aquifer that feeds the habitat.
The habitats of the known Death Valley pupfish populations, characterized by warm temperatures, high salinity, and seasonal fluctuations in water availability, are vulnerable to environmental change and disturbance. Due to the short life span of individuals (10–12 months), successful annual reproduction is crucial to population survival.
Death Valley pupfish 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 English Wikipedia article on Death Valley pupfish, Wikidata item Q5247243. 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.
