In Texas, freshwater fishes recognized as State Threatened or Endangered (STE) receive special attention when Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) consults with other agencies on projects that have the potential to alter freshwater systems. Regulatory oversight by TPWD of scientific and zoological collections, fish stockings, commercial fishing, disturbances to state-owned streambeds, and exotic species management must also ensure that no adverse impacts occur to STE freshwater fishes. Furthermore, STE species are prioritized by TPWD for voluntary-based investments in research, monitoring, habitat restoration, and habitat protection. Given these and other protections afforded to STE freshwater fishes, it is important that the lists of STE species be frequently assessed using the best available science on status, trends, and threats to species and their habitats. In 2018, TPWD adopted standardized methodologies, listing criteria, and listing thresholds to comprehensively assess the status of the diversity of species of fish, wildlife, and plants within the resource management purview and jurisdiction of TPWD. This methodology was applied to assess the status of Tex- as freshwater fishes and recommend revisions to the lists of STE species. As a result, 16 additional species of freshwater fish were recognized as STE in 2020. This article profiles the species conservation status assessment and stakeholder input processes used to identify species recommended as STE, and shares recommendations and lessons learned transferrable to other states that maintain similar state-based protected species lists.

Predicting how stream fishes may respond to habitat restoration efforts is difficult, in part because of an incomplete understanding of how basic biological parameters such as growth and ontogenetic habitat shifts interact with flow regime and riverscape ecology. We assessed age-specific Guadalupe Bass Micropterus treculii habitat associations at three different spatial scales in the South Llano River, a spring-fed stream on the Edwards Plateau of central Texas, and the influence of habitat and flow regime on growth. We classified substrates using a low-cost side-scan sonar system. We used scale microstructure to determine age and to back-calculate size at age. Over 65% of captured Guadalupe Bass were age 2 or age 3, but individuals ranged from 0 to 7 y of age. Habitat associations overlapped considerably among age classes 1–3+, but age-0 Guadalupe Bass tended to associate with greater proportions of pool and run mesohabitats with submerged aquatic vegetation. Although habitat metrics across multiple scales did not have a large effect on growth, river discharge was negatively correlated with growth rates. Understanding age-specific Guadalupe Bass habitat associations at multiple scales will increase the effectiveness of restoration efforts directed at the species by assisting in determining appropriate ecological requirements of each life-history stage and spatial scales for conservation actions.

Today the only member of the family Salmonidae (trout, salmon and their relatives) that occurs in Texas is the non-native Rainbow Trout Oncorhynchus mykiss. That species is widely stocked around the state and there is one permanent population in McKittrick Creek, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, where it was introduced in the early 1900s. However...

A quick overview of 15 years of UT Fish Collection growth and collaborations with Texas Parks and Wildlife by Dean A. Hendrickson, Adam E. Cohen, Gary P. Garrett As stated in the Biodiversity Center’s Collections webpage, the challenges for our collections are to: 1) “document biodiversity,” 2) “understand how biological processes generate and maintain it,” and 3) “communicate those findings and their relevance to a broader community”. Some readers may have seen our recent post about the space issue in UT’s Fish Collection. If not, in a nutshell - we now house 73,047 cataloged jars of preserved fishes containing more than 1.5 million specimens of 871 species, and our continuing growth has us now very close to our facility’s capacity. We thus worry that we will soon be unable to continue addressing challenge 1, and will be lacking up-to-date data needed to continue to evaluate the status of our regional biodiversity (2 and 3).

Desert ecosystems are fragile and slow to recover from perturbations, and some changes may be irreparable. Exploitation of limited resources, particularly groundwater pumping, has degraded natural systems in the Chihuahuan Desert ecoregion of Texas, caused degradation of aquatic habitats, and resulted in extirpation and extinction of species and, ultimately, losses of entire ecosystems (Garrett and Edwards 2001). Deep trenching of streams by overgrazing-induced erosion has resulted in lowered water tables and further desiccation of watersheds. This contributes to spring failure, ciénega drying, and the transformation of previously flowing streams into dry arroyos (Minckley et al. 1991).

American Eel Anguilla rostrata has a unique and complex life history that is fairly well-studied on the eastern coast of the United States, but few studies have been done on Gulf of Mexico drainages. To inform conservation and management decisions, efforts to better understand the population structure, seasonal dynamics, and life history of American Eel are underway. The primary objectives of our efforts are to assess the current and historical distribution and abundance, habitat use, movement patterns, parasite occurrence, diet and population structure of American Eel across all life stages in Gulf of Mexico drainages of Texas. (poster presented at annual meeting of Southern Division of American Fisheries Society, Little Rock, Arkansas, February 2020)

American Eel (Anguilla rostrata) is a facultative catadromous species with a unique and complex life history. After hatching, larval eel begin their journey as leptocephalus in the Sargasso Sea and drift on ocean currents along the Atlantic coast, Gulf of Mexico, and Central and South America. They transform into glass eel as they approach shore and begin to develop pigment as they settle in estuaries or move upstream into rivers as elvers. American Eel then spend 3-40+ years in these habitats as yellow eel until they sexually mature into silver eel and return to the Sargasso Sea where they spawn and presumably die. State and federal agencies, multiple universities and numerous citizen science volunteers are working to better understand their movement patterns and recruitment window in Texas. Citizen scientists with coastal chapters of the Texas Master Naturalists (TMN) have taken a lead role in assisting with this effort. Since February of 2018, TMN have established a network of monitoring sites across the mid to upper Texas Coast to sample for juvenile American Eel using eel mops. Eel mops have been deployed for various lengths of time at 29 sites throughout the past two years and checked routinely for glass and elver eel. Volunteers have conducted approximately 250 eel mop checks and provided record of their catch by category (e.g., eel, shrimp, crab, other fish, etc.) based on occurrence or abundance. TMN have documented close to 7,000 individuals across all categories with various species of crab, shrimp, and fish being the most common groups collected. While no glass or elver eel have been collected in an eel mop, TMN have provide valuable data for this project by testing a common gear type that is often used to monitor for American Eel on the Atlantic Coast.

The Fishes of Texas Project aims to provide reliable occurrences of fishes from Texas and shared drainage basins. Starting with the database of specimens held in the University of Texas' Ichthyology Collection (TNHCi) we added specimen data collected from our study area from all of the museums we could find to create the Fishes of Texas database, which can be queried via our search tools alongside documentation and other resources online (www.fishesoftexas.org). At the time of this writing the database includes data from 44 specimen holding collections, but the project has grown and will soon include data from non-specimen sources as well. The data, having come from many disparate sources, all with various formatting, were previously difficult to access and analyze as a whole. After extensive compilation, formatting, standardization, georeferencing, and specimen examining the database is a verified and specimen supported dataset for researchers interested in Texas fishes.

Few individuals on our planet do not know what trout and salmon are. They are usually recognised as highly palatable, and often colourful species, and most who know them likely visualize cold, beautiful, pristine, free flowing, alpine or forest streams and rivers as their typical habitats. Many will also know of the remarkable migrations taken by some species, moving from their birth locations in rivers to oceans and then returning to their birthplaces to spawn and die. Some may recognise their importance as prized targets of anglers, particularly fly fishers, who spare no expenses to go after these trophies. Many others who might not be so familiar with the characteristics just mentioned may likely recognise species of this family as the tasty, and usually relatively costly fish found frozen or on ice in grocery stores and fish markets, or in cans, or smoked, or served in restaurants. Their flesh, often pink or rosy-coloured, is prized worldwide. There is no doubt that fishes in this family (Salmonidae) are well known in most of the developed and developing countries of the world and that some have become extremely economically and globally important commercial species that support large-scale recreational as well as wild commercial fisheries, and are massively produced by global aquaculture. At the same time many are also imperilled to some degree. Before this project, the Red List database contained 140 species of Salmonids. Here we’ll focus on the genus Oncorhynchus, commonly known as the Pacific salmons and trout, which prior to this project was represented in the Red List by six species. Then, setting aside the many “salmon” of this genus, we’ll focus only on trout, specifically those of a large and diverse lineage, best known for one species, the famous rainbow trout (O. mykiss). Originally known only from California and other Pacific drainages of the U.S., rainbow trout have long been a prized target of anglers, and the species has been bred in captivity for at least 150 years. High demand for it for both sport fisheries, as well as wild and captive protein production, resulted in it now being established on every continent. It has become not only one of the world’s most important recreational fishing species, but also one of the planet’s most widely cultured vertebrates. It is effectively global agriculture’s “fish version” of the chicken, with global aquaculture production of the species in 2014 reaching 812,940 metric tonnes valued at nearly 4 billion US\$ (U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) n.d.) That rainbow trout of global fishery and aquaculture fame is known to be one of about 10 closely related subspecies of what is called the “coastal rainbow” branch of the evolutionary tree of the genus. Most of those are from California, but two native Mexican taxa have long been recognised as part of this lineage, O. m. nelsoni (Nelson’s trout – recently reviewed by (Ruiz Campos, 2017)) of the northernmost mountains of Baja California, and O. chrysogaster (the Mexican golden trout – recently covered by multiple contributors (Ruiz-Luna & Garcia De León, 2016). Recent genetic studies (AbadíaCardoso et al., 2015) confirm those relationships and reveal, from specimens collected by the bi-national group of researchers known as Truchas Mexicanas (Hendrickson et al., 2003), that Mexico’s share of the diversity in this lineage is much greater. At least 10 more, still undescribed species of native trout reside in remote, rugged and isolated corners of the Sierra Madre Occidental extending as far south as the high mountains between Mazatlán and Ciudad Durango. Truchas Mexicanas’ fieldwork left no doubt that most share a need for conservation actions to help their often small and fragmented populations persist, and some are critically imperilled (Camarena-Rosales et al., 2006; Hendrickson et al., 2007; Hendrickson & Tomelleri 2019). While their formal descriptions have been delayed for various reasons, recent genetic validation of their distinctiveness, and clear need for recognition of the need for conservation actions on their behalf, led those studying them to petition the IUCN to add them to the Red List while their descriptions are being finalized. That petition was accepted and their assessments were completed as part of this project.

The inland waters of Mexico support a highly diverse group of freshwater fishes with high levels of endemism that occur across a broad range of aquatic habitat types. These aquatic ecosystems provide many direct (e.g., fisheries) and indirect (e.g., agricultural irrigation) benefits to people, and support local livelihoods and economies across Mexico. Freshwater ecosystems are undervalued and receive insufficient funding, political attention and protection. Developing interests and funding for freshwater species conservation is crucial for “bending the curve” to reduce and ultimately reverse freshwater biodiversity declines. Historical disregard for the health and sustainable use of freshwater ecosystems has resulted in alarming rates of loss in the quality and availability of aquatic habitat. This report presents the most recent information on the conservation status and distribution of freshwater fishes in Mexico, and examines the stressors that are driving their declining conservation status. Important conservation actions and considerations are also presented. Five hundred and thirty-six species of freshwater fishes were assessed against the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria, representing the most comprehensive assessment of freshwater biodiversity in Mexico to date. This assessment seeks to address the insufficient information available on freshwater fish conservation status, which has resulted in their inadequate representation in environmental planning and management. The full data set, including all species distribution maps, is freely available through the IUCN Red List website (www.iucnredlist.org). Forty percent of all extant species assessed are threatened with extinction, assuming all Data Deficient species are threatened in the same proportion as those for which enough information was available. The most pervasive threats are related to habitat loss and degradation, which is driven primarily by unsustainable water use and widespread agricultural activity. Excessive extraction of groundwater and diversion of surface water for human consumption, industrial processes, and plantation agriculture has led to widespread flow reductions, reduced water tables, and subsequent drying of aquatic habitat, which is especially prevalent in the arid, endorheic spring systems of northern and central Mexico. Mexico’s vast hydroelectric infrastructure has altered the historical flow regime of many major rivers, blocking natural migration routes and fragmenting subpopulations of native fishes. Agricultural runoff, inadequate wastewater treatment, and industrial discharges have also resulted in increased levels of pollution. A number of non-native fish species have been introduced both intentionally and unintentionally throughout many of Mexico’s natural and artificial surface waters, with profound impacts on native species distribution and abundance. Given the high connectivity of riverine surface waters and underlying aquifers, the impacts of these threats spread rapidly throughout freshwater ecosystems. Future conservation efforts must place greater emphasis on upstream, downstream, and lateral connectivity within water catchments. Systematic conservation planning approaches should be implemented to develop an integrated conservation action plan for freshwater fishes in Mexico, including broad stakeholder participation, environmental monitoring schemes, and the development of protected areas designed to maintain high levels of aquatic connectivity. Another priority is to direct additional research effort towards the high proportion of species assessed as Data Deficient due to insufficient information on their conservation status and distributions. This lack of information presents a significant bottleneck to the effective management and conservation of Mexico’s freshwater habitats and ichthyofauna. From a policy perspective, the information presented in this report will help support the implementation of multilateral environmental agreements in Mexico, guide conservation planning and priority setting at the national and international level, and provide a baseline of conservation success in subsequent assessments of extinction risk. In addition, this new information will help efforts to achieve the targets of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as: Target 6.6 for protecting and restoring water-related ecosystems; Target 6.5 on implementing integrated water resources management at all levels; Target 15.1 for conservation, restoration and sustainable use of terrestrial and inland freshwater ecosystems and their services; and Target 15.5 focused on urgent and significant action to reduce the degradation of natural habitats, halt the loss of biodiversity and, protect and prevent the extinction of threatened species. The IUCN Red List is one of the most authoritative global standards supporting policy and action to conserve biodiversity. The analysis presented in this report, based on an assessment of species Red List status, will provide new information to help guide conservation actions and development planning to safeguard the diversity of freshwater ichthyofauna in Mexico. Periodic update of IUCN Red List species assessments will enable calculation of a Red List Index of change in freshwater species extinction risk over time, which will inform managers on the conservation effectiveness of any management interventions.

Conservation biology is a multifaceted discipline with the primary objective of protection and perpetuation of entire natural communities and ecosystems (Soulé 1985). As such, it requires defensible and ideally verifiable information about community composition over time. Specimens held in natural history museums are the preferred form of evidence documenting historical populations because they persist in collections for hundreds of years or more. They can be examined along with original notes and labels for verification of specimen identification, location, and date of collection (Pauly 1995; SaenzArroyo et al. 2005; Lister 2011). Until humans began to preserve specimens and associated data, observations were non-verifiable and thus easily dismissed when found to conflict with other sources or opinions

The Fishes of Texas Project (FoTX) (http://fishesoftexas.org) database currently has 124,452 specimen-vouchered occurrence records spanning \textgreater 150 years with over 400,000 new records (including non-vouchered sources such as literature, anecdotal, and photo-based) in the process of being imported. Continual data growth prompted creation of new tools to dynamically assess (as the data evolve) the state of data coverage across various dimensions to increase user understanding and accessibility to the data and improve overall utility of the project. We produced species sampling curves, temporal species accumulation graphs, and heat maps of collecting event density over time and space for each river sub-basin within Texas. A QGIS plugin was also created to better assess the suspect status of incoming records. Each type of visualization has basic documentation, easily accessible statistical summaries, flexible queries, and exploration tools to help reveal variations in sampling density over both temporal and spatial dimensions. We highlight here the San Bernard River as an example of a notably under-sampled sub-basin (as indicated by diverse forms of evidence). With addition of future records, these dynamic tools will continue to illustrate taxonomic and spatial sampling deficiencies that in turn will help guide conservation planning.

The prestigious journal BioScience just released "Natural History Collections: Advancing the Frontiers of Science," a compilation of recent natural history collection-related papers that sheds light on the importance of digitizing and publishing collections data, and the substantial obstacles confronting collections staff working on that. This comes shortly after our own Curator of Entomology, Dr. Alex Wild, posted a description of his own experiences tackling these tasks in his insect collection. All of us curators in the Biodiversity Center know these obstacles all too well, having been laboring on them for decades. As Dr. Wild pointed out, we're making progress despite major limitations, and his collection now being 1% digitized, though perhaps sounding trivial to some, is indeed a major accomplishment. Here, I'll provide a broader perspective, exploring all of our collections combined, since, at long last, I finally can! All of our data from all four primary Biodiversity Center collections are now easily explored anywhere in the world via a single online portal - the international GBIF.org (Global Biodiversity Information Facility).

With 95% of the land in Texas privately owned, conservation of the aquatic resources is particularly daunting and is exemplified by the fact that 48% of the 191 native freshwater fishes in Texas are now of conservation concern. Partnerships with private landowners is not only sensible, but often the only way to achieve long-term conservation goals. In the Chihuahuan Desert region of Texas, 55% of the native fishes are of conservation concern or already lost to extirpation or extinction. Although there are numerous contributing factors, habitat degradation and loss are the primary culprits. For decades, research and restoration have focused on some of the more imperiled species and their habitats. From reestablishing ciénegas, to landowner partnerships, to Conservation Agreements, much has been accomplished. Unfortunately, the challenges increase faster than our accomplishments. Our latest, and most promising, approach has been to develop six Native Fish Conservation Areas in the Chihuahuan Desert. These NFCAs represent an ecologically-focused conservation prioritization of watershed segments that serve as native fish “strongholds” and they function as priority areas for conservation investments to promote integrated, holistic conservation strategies that enable the long-term persistence of freshwater biodiversity. Current and future conservation of aquatic resources in Texas emphasizes a landscape-scale approach, working primarily with private landowners to provide conservation best management practices and support on-the-ground projects to maintain or restore habitats to sustain functional ecosystems.

Established in 1964, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species has evolved to become the world’s most comprehensive information source on the global conservation status of animal, fungi and plant species.

Established in 1964, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species has evolved to become the world’s most comprehensive information source on the global conservation status of animal, fungi and plant species.

Established in 1964, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species has evolved to become the world’s most comprehensive information source on the global conservation status of animal, fungi and plant species.

We designed and tested environmental-DNA (eDNA) probes to identify the presence of species of groundwater salamanders (genus Eurycea) and the Mexican blindcat (Prietella phreatophila) from environmental samples. Environmental samples were screened for the target species using the eDNA probes and quantitative PCR (qPCR). Custom probes were designed to amplify species-specific regions of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene. A new cytochrome b gene tree was created to ensure full probe coverage of all the recently revised central Texas Eurycea species. Probes were optimized and tested on tissue samples of Eurycea and P. phreatophila species. We developed successful probes for each of the described, as well as the known but undescribed, species of central Texas Eurycea (is a few cases, one probes detects a few closely related species), and for P. phreatophila. We confirmed that these probes are highly species-specific, so they can be used not just for detection of Eurycea, but for species identication. Twenty-six sites across central Texas and Coahuila, Mexico, were subjected to water sampling for the purposes of environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis. These springs, caves, and wells were potential sites for karst aquifer-dwelling salamanders (genus Eurycea) and Mexican blindcat (Prietella phreatophila). To detect the presence of these rare species, volumes of water were pumped through a fine filter which was returned to a lab at the University of Texas - Austin. A DNA extraction was promptly performed on each filter to yield an eDNA sample. The presence of P. phreatophila was detected at a known site for the species in Val Verde County, Texas, validating both the detection method and the molecular probe. Eurycea sp. 1 was detected at a new spring for the species close to a known sample site. An additional positive control site was Eliza Spring of the Barton Springs complex, where E. sosorum was detected. However, we did not detect the target species at several other sites of known occurrence. We conclude that positive results (the presence of a species) are meaningful (we detected no false negatives), but negative results (no species detection) do not necessarily mean that the target species is not present (we did sample known localities for the target species that produced false negatives).