| Flame Chub | |
|---|---|
| Conservation status | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Actinopterygii |
| Order: | Cypriniformes |
| Family: | Cyprinidae |
| Genus: | Hemitremia Cope, 1870 |
| Species: | H. flammea |
| Binomial name | |
| Hemitremia flammea (D. S. Jordan & C. H. Gilbert in Jordan, 1878) |
|
The Flame Chub (Hemitremia flammea) is a species of ray-finned fish in the Cyprinidae family. It is found only in the United States.
Flame Chub is a short species with a round body form in profile. The head is small, blunt, and rounded. Breeding males are striking, with lower sides that become flame red while their venters remain light. In each individual, the anterior base of the dorsal fin has a red spot, and the light olive back and sides are streaked with golden brown. A dark lateral band runs between the golden stripes, ending in a small but separate spot at the base of the caudal fin. The range broadly follows the Tennessee River from above Knoxville, TN, to the mouth of the Duck River. Historically the species was found in Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia.
The species is very sensitive to human alteration of its preferred habitat, small flowing streams often associated with springs. Flame chubs are extirpated from Kentucky, and close to extirpation in Georgia. In north Alabama in 2007, Bruce Stallsmith from the University of Alabama in Huntsville visited 53 sites known to have produced flame chubs since the 1960s, and found flame chubs at 18 of these sites. Many sites were obviously degraded by forms of land use change such as putting a stream in a concrete culvert, or paving over part of a stream. The fish deserves recognition as an increasingly vulnerable species as human population expands in its native range.
Its name means fire fish