Virgin Chub

Range

It is restricted to two tributaries of the Colorado River, the Virgin River in Arizona, Nevada, and Utah, and the upper and middle reaches of the Muddy River in Nevada. The Arizona range of the Virgin chub is restricted to the Virgin River within Mohave County.

Habitat

In its native habitat, it occurs only in the generally warm, turbid, and saline mainstream of the Virgin and Muddy Rivers, and very rarely in the immediate mouths of their major tributaries. The Virgin chub is most common in deeper areas where waters are swift, but not turbulent, and most often is associated with boulders or other types of cover.

Population trends

The Virgin chub is continuing to decline. In 1988 an attempt to remove red shiners (which are a common competitor with the Virgin chub) from 35 km (22 mi) of habitat on the Virgin River, ended in failure as populations of Virgin chub continued to be decimated by other factors including habitat modifications.

Management factors

Activities that are known to be detrimental to Virgin chub populations are the de-watering of habitats through the re-routing of stream water, stream impoundment, channelization, domestic livestock grazing, timber harvesting, mining, road construction, polluting, and stocking non-natives.

Threats: widespread modification and reduction of habitat; dewatering by agricultural diversion; increased temperature, salinity, and turbidity of the Virgin River; introduction of non-native fish and parasite species.

Management needs: protect and enhance habitat, including water quantity and quality; ameliorate effects of nonnative fish species in chub waters; re-establish additional populations.

Hybrid origin

The Virgin chub likely evolved via introgressive hybridization between the roundtail chub, G. robusta, and the bonytail chub, G. elegans. Evidence for a hybrid origin of the Virgin chub is based on morphology and allozymes. The mitochondrial DNA of the Virgin chub is nearly identical to that of G. elegans.