Red shiner

The red shiner or red-horse minnow (Cyprinella lutrensis) is a species of freshwater ray-finned fish in the family Leuciscidae, the shiners, daces and minnows. They are deep-bodied and laterally compressed, and can grow to about 3 inches (7.6 cm) in length. For most of the year, both males and females have silver sides and whitish abdomens. Males in breeding coloration, though, have iridescent pink-purple-blue sides and a red crown and fins (except the dorsal fin which remains dark).

Red shiners can live up to three years. They are omnivorous; they eat both aquatic and terrestrial invertebrates, as well as algae. Red shiners have also been known to eat the eggs and larvae of native fish found in locations where they have been introduced.

Habitat

Red shiners are found naturally in a variety of aquatic habitats, including backwaters, creek mouths, streams containing sand and silt substrates, riffles, and pools. They are tolerant of areas of frequent high turbidity and siltation, but they tend to avoid waters with high acidity. Red shiner are habitat generalists in that they are adapted to favor a wide range of environmental conditions that are not ideal to most other fish species. These include habitats degraded by human disturbance, and those with poor water quality (such as polluted waterways), natural physiochemical extremes, and seasonally intermittent flows.

Distribution

The red shiner is naturally found in the Mississippi River basin from southern Wisconsin and eastern Indiana to South Dakota and Wyoming and south to Louisiana. It is also found as an introduced species in Arizona, Alabama, California, Colorado, Illinois, Georgia, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina, Wyoming, Massachusetts, Utah, Virginia, Nevada, and New Mexico. Although the species is overall widespread and common, the subspecies from Maravillas Creek in Texas (Cyprinella lutrensis blairi) became extinct in the late 1950s due to competition from the invasive plains killifish.