Devils Hole pupfish
Cyprinodon diabolis
— Where the name comes from
Cyprinodon is “carp tooth”, from kyprînos and odoús; diabolis comes from Devils Hole, the Nevada desert chasm it lives in. The American Spanish name cachorrito, “little puppy”, is what these small fish are known by in the south-west: they chase and nip one another like pups.
— Facts
- Group
- Fish · Actinopterygii · Chondrichthyes
- Order
- Killifishes and livebearers
- Habitat
- A single karst pool fed by fossil groundwater
- Range
- Devils Hole, Nevada: one cavity
- Size
- 2–3 cm, under 1 g
- Diet
- Algae and diatoms from the limestone shelf
- Lifespan
- 1 year
— Characteristics
- 01
It lives in water at thirty-three degrees with very little oxygen.
- 02
It has lost the pelvic fins that the rest of its family have.
- 03
The entire species depends on a rock shelf three metres by five.
— What sets it apart
It is probably the vertebrate with the smallest range in the world: the whole species lives in a fissure in the Nevada desert, and breeds on a single limestone ledge of a few square metres just below the surface. In the 1970s agricultural wells in the area began lowering the water table and exposing the shelf; the case reached the United States Supreme Court, which in 1976 ruled that protecting a national monument implies protecting the groundwater that feeds it. The population still swings between thirty-five and two hundred: they are counted one by one, twice a year.
