endemic to a single nation

United States

Origin: Native

Regularity: Regularly occurring

Currently: Present

Confidence: Confident

Type of Residency: Year-round

Global Range: Gulf Slope, from Galveston Bay drainage, Texas, east to Choctawhatchee River system, Florida, and middle Chattahoochee River drainage, Georgia; Mississippi River basin from the Gulf to southeastern Kansas (Holcroft 2004), central Missouri, southern Illinois, western Kentucky, and eastern Tennessee; common, except in Appalachian uplands.

Length: 10 cm

Habitat Type: Freshwater

Comments: Near surface in quiet or flowing, relatively clear, sand-gravel bottom headwaters, creeks, and small rivers; often occurs along margins near thick stands of emergent vegetation (Lee et al. 1980, Page and Burr 1991).

Non-Migrant: No. All populations of this species make significant seasonal migrations.

Locally Migrant: No. No populations of this species make local extended movements (generally less than 200 km) at particular times of the year (e.g., to breeding or wintering grounds, to hibernation sites).

Locally Migrant: No. No populations of this species make annual migrations of over 200 km.

Comments: Eats various arthropods and algae (Smith 1979).

United States

Rounded National Status Rank: N5 - Secure

Rounded Global Status Rank: G5 - Secure

Comments: Allozyme data indicate that Euryzonus and F. OLIVACEUS are sister species (Cashner et al. 1992). Exhibits a high degree of genetic variation both within and among populations. The genus Fundulus was removed from Atheriniformes:Cyprinodontidae and placed in Cyprinodontiformes:Fundulidae by Parenti (1981); pending confirmation based on other character suites, this change was not accepted in the 1991 AFS checklist (Robins et al. 1991). See Wiley (1986) for a study of the evolutionary relationships of Fundulus topminnows based on morphological characters. See Cashner et al. (1992) for an allozyme-based phylogenetic analysis of the genus Fundulus.