The laurel dace, a fish in the Cyprinidae (Minnows) family, is found in streams in Bledsoe and Rhea Counties, Tennessee. The laurel dace was first collected by Charles Saylor, a TVA ichthyologist, in 1976. Because nonbreeding individuals are similar in appearance to the more common congener, the southern redbelly dace (P. erythrogaster), the existence of the laurel dace went unnoticed until Saylor donated his 1976 specimens to the University of Tennessee Research Collection of Fishes in 1990. Dr. David Etnier examined those specimens and believed that they probably represented an undescribed species, a belief confirmed by the nuptial coloration characteristics observed in later collections.