Spring pygmy sunfish

Appearance

Males and females exhibit different coloration. Breeding males are vividly colored. Overall the breeding male is very dark except for vertical, iridescent blue-green bars along the body and iridescent mottling on the cheek.

Range and habitat

The preferred habitat for the spring pygmy sunfish is spring water, and associated spring-fed wetlands. Historically, this fish was known to occur at two other sites in northern Alabama, one in Limestone County and the other in Lauderdale County. Currently, the only spring-dwelling population occurs in Limestone County in the Beaverdam-Moss Spring/Swamp spring system, where it is threatened by the construction of an automobile plant, though a conservation agreement was reached between the manufacturers and the Center for Biological Diversity.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Diet

Diet likely consists of small aquatic invertebrates such as amphipods, isopods, and larvae of mayflies, caddisflies, and midges.

In crisis

The spring pygmy sunfish was considered extinct until its rediscovery in the Beaverdam Spring complex in 1973 by researchers from the University of Tennessee. The spring pygmy sunfish and its habitat are currently facing the threats of both declining water quality and quantity.

Spring pygmy sunfish 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 Spring pygmy sunfish, Wikidata item Q5776099. 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.