Conasauga Logperch

The Conasauga logperch (Percina jenkinsi) is one of the rarest darters in North America. This little fish is named after the river it calls home-- the Conasauga River in Tennessee and Georgia. For a darter, they are quite large, reaching up to 5.25 inches in length, but they have an elegant body pattern that helps them blend into their environment. Eight thin vertical bars extend along their sides like tiger stripes, eventually expanding to small spots, with narrower half- and quarter-length bars in between. Logperch typically inhabit riffles (shallow areas of rivers) and runs (fast-flowing areas of rivers) with coarse gravel and small cobble substrate. They use their pig-like snout to flip over small cobble stones to search for their favorite grub, aquatic insect larvae! Over the past two decades, we have observed the Conasauga logperch population declining. Some stressors include habitat degradation associated with agriculture, urbanization, and past timber harvest, their already-small population size and limited geographic range, and climate change climate change
Climate change includes both global warming driven by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases and the resulting large-scale shifts in weather patterns. Though there have been previous periods of climatic change, since the mid-20th century humans have had an unprecedented impact on Earth's climate system and caused change on a global scale.

Learn more about climate change .