Critically Endangered
Empetrichthys latos
Empetrichthys latos
Empetrichthys latos is a splitfin in the family Goodeidae (order Cyprinodontiformes), recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
It has its dorsal and anal fins far back on its body and it lacks pelvic fins. The fish is greenish on its back and silvery green on the belly.
This fish reaches a maximum length of about 7 cm (2.8 in).
Range and habitat
It is endemic to Nevada in the United States, where it was limited to the Pahrump Valley near the California border. It nearly became extinct due to habitat destruction and no longer occurs there. Spawning is most common in spring but can occur at any time of the year when conditions are right.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Habits
The male takes on a blue tinge during spawning.
In crisis
This is an important consideration for management as establishing populations with a balanced sex ratio is likely desired. This species is the only surviving member of genus Empetrichthys, the other, the Ash Meadows killifish (Empetrichthys merriami), having become extinct in the 1940s. The Raycraft Ranch springfish (E. Latos concavus) became extinct when its spring was destroyed in the 1950s.
The remaining fish is the nominal subspecies E. Latos latos. In 1975 the Pahrump poolfish was extirpated from its habitat, Manse Spring, when it experienced competition from the introduced goldfish, some vegetation was removed, and the spring dried up due to groundwater pumping nearby.
Empetrichthys latos 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 Empetrichthys latos, Wikidata item Q5298209. 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.
