Article text: Wikipedia contributors, Pretty shiner (source revision). Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Retrieved 2026-10-11.
Pretty Shiner
Lythrurus bellus
Leuciscidae · freshwater water fish
2 minute read · Species guide

About Pretty Shiner
The pretty shiner (Lythrurus bellus) is a freshwater ray-finned fish belonging to the family Leuciscidae, the shiners, daces and minnows. It occurs in the Mobile Bay drainage, and the Tennessee River drainage of the Bear and Yellow Creek systems in Alabama and Mississippi. Its preferred habitat is sandy and clay bottomed pools and runs of headwaters, creeks and small rivers.
Diet and feeding
The FishTraits compilation records these diet categories for this species: aquatic or other vascular plants; invertebrates or larval fish. These are broad categories, not a claim that every individual consumes every example in a category.
Reported feeding positions include surface or water-column feeding. The compilation combines published observations; diets can vary with age, locality, and available food.
Habitat preferences
Reported habitat associations include streams and small rivers, creeks.
The source records associations with clay or silt, sand, gravel, bedrock. An association indicates reported use, rather than an exclusive requirement.
Reproduction and parental care
The compilation reports a representative maturity age of 1.5 years. Its maturity field summarizes mean, median, or modal estimates, usually for females; male estimates can be used when female data are unavailable. It is not a fixed age at which every fish first breeds.
Recorded spawning months are Apr, May, Jun, Jul for the source’s reporting region (MS). This is a regional calendar, not a range-wide schedule.
The reproductive-guild classification includes spawning on open substrates without guarding the brood.
Size and recorded longevity
FishTraits reports a maximum total length of 7.5 centimetres. Some entries use an estimated asymptotic length; this value should not be treated as a certified record catch.
Recorded longevity in the compilation is 3 years. Wild observations were preferred, but captive records were accepted where wild records were unavailable, and unspecified records were assumed wild. The value is not a guaranteed wild lifespan or an aquarium life expectancy.
Range
Where it lives
A blank area on the dot layer usually means nobody sampled there, not that the fish is absent. Turn on “every survey site” to see where the survey looked.
Share of records by state
The USGS stream survey caught it at 97 of its sites, in 2 states. That survey and the GBIF records are two different counts of two different things, so the site keeps them apart.
Habitat
Water and movement
- Water
- WoRMS records this species in fresh water.
- Migration
- Undetermined
Classification
Taxonomy
- Kingdom
- Animalia
- Phylum
- Chordata
- Superclass
- Actinopterygii
- Class
- Teleostei
- Order
- Cypriniformes
- Family
- Leuciscidae
- Genus
- Lythrurus
- Species
- Lythrurus bellus
- ITIS TSN
- 163851
- WoRMS AphiaID
- 1044810
- GBIF key
- 2366073
Common questions about Pretty Shiner
What is the scientific name of Pretty Shiner?
Does Pretty Shiner live in fresh water or salt water?
Where has Pretty Shiner been recorded in the United States?
Closest relatives
Other Lythrurus species
Same family