Leatherside chub

Taxobox
name = Leatherside chub
regnum = Animalia
phylum = Chordata
classis = Actinopterygii
ordo = Cypriniformes
familia = Cyprinidae
subfamilia = Leuciscinae
genus = "Snyderichthys"
genus_authority = R. R. Miller, 1945
species = "S. copei"
binomial = "Snyderichthys copei"
binomial_authority = (Jordan & Gilbert, 1881)
synonyms ="Squalius copei" Jordan & Gilbert, 1881

The leatherside chub, "Snyderichthys copei" is a cyprinid fish of western North America.

This is a small fish, reported at up to 15 cm (6 in) in length, but more typically half that. The tapered body is covered with very small scales over a skin with a leathery texture, inspiring the common name. Overall color is bluish dorsally and silver ventrally; males are distinguished by patches of orange-red color on the axils of the paired fins, at the base of the anal fin, and along the lower lobe of the tail, as well as golden-red specks at the upper end of the gill opening, and between eye and upper jaw. Unlike most other minnows, both dorsal and anal fins have 8 rays.

Its habitat is cooler creeks and rivers with moderate currents, where the adults congregate in pools or riffles, while the young favor quiet areas with brush near the shore.

Leatherside chubs range from the upper Snake River system in Idaho and Wyoming south to the Sevier River in Utah, being commonly found in the rivers draining into the Great Salt Lake and Utah Lake. They have been introduced into the Colorado River system, such as Strawberry Reservoir and Price River in Utah.

This chub has been extensively used as fishing bait.

Originally named "Squalius copei" and later placed in "Gila", this chub was separated into into a monotypic genus in 1945. This placement was eventually verified using mtDNA 12S rRNA sequence data. It seems a fairly close relative of the spinedaces (genus "Lepidomeda") and the spikedaces (genus "Meda"), but the phylogeny and indeed the validity of the proposed "plagopterin" clade is insufficiently resolved.(Simons & Mayden 1997)

References

*FishBase species|genus=Snyderichthys|species=copei|year=2006|month=November
* (1997): Phylogenetic Relationships of the Creek Chubs and the Spine-Fins: an Enigmatic Group of North American Cyprinid Fishes (Actinopterygii: Cyprinidae). "Cladistics" 13(3): 187-205. doi|10.1111/j.1096-0031.1997.tb00315.x (HTML abstract)
* (1987): "Fishes of the Great Basin": 173-175. University of Nevada Press, Reno.