Species Accounts

We provide species accounts (or "taxon pages") that provide imagery and information on the basic taxonomy, biology, ecology, biogeography and life history of most Texas' freshwater species. Links to those are found via the Checklist tab or via links elsewhere in the site. These species account pages include time-lapse videos that show the mapped collection history for most species in decadal increments. Those videos are downloadable and available to our users for various purposes (please cite properly). A link to view records for each species is provided in the caption of the video. Registered site users can comment regarding any aspect of a species account and submit photos of the species using the features at the bottom of the taxon pages.

FoTX Project collaborates with Dr. Timothy Bonner and his group at Texas State University to provide the text for these accounts. Users should be aware that the accounts were originally published by Dr. Bonner on his own website (http://www.bio.txstate.edu/~tbonner/txfishes/index.htm) which is now archived here and served as a sub-domain of the FoTX website. The content in that archive is an exact and complete copy of Dr. Bonner's site made on January 23, 2013.

Dr. Bonner's website had species accounts for 217 freshwater species, and that content now appears in our website's taxon pages for all of those species. That is only a subset of the many freshwater, marine, and estuarine species now included in the FoTX project, so comparable content is lacking in our site for many species in our database, though we do have time-lapse maps and photographs in the taxon pages for almost all species.

At this time, most text provided in our site's species accounts (taxon pages) is verbatim from Dr. Bonner's archived site with few and minor exceptions. His accounts of subspecies not currently recognized by FoTX were combined into their parent taxa (Notropis simus and Cyprinella lutrensis). We had to reconcile taxonomy differences (mostly spelling changes). Some species accounts included in Dr. Bonner's site are not yet incorporated in this site since museum specimens of some taxa do not yet exist in our database (Belonesox belizanus, Cichlasoma nigrofasciatum, Oncorhynchus clarki, Platydoras armatulus, Psuedotropheus sp., Salmo trutta). Others are not yet included because they represent undescribed forms not yet recognized by FoTX (Ictalurus sp. = Chihuahua catfish, Cycleptus sp. = Rio Grande blue sucker, Cyprinella sp.= Nueces River shiner). We are working to incorporate these taxa in future versions of the site.

Since Dr. Bonner's species accounts were based primarily on published literature and have a history independent of FoTX and its still strictly specimen-based data, it should not be surprising that sometimes differences exist between this project's database and the taxon page contents. We are working to find these discrepancies and gathering ideas regarding how to reconcile them with our specimen data. We request that users contribute by commenting on the form at the bottom of the page. In this way user comments can become a permanent part of the species account and direct us towards more thorough research.