In defense of desert fishes

Abstract

No finer tribute to the life’s work of W.L. Minckley could exist than this volume. For decades, ‘Minck’ and a small cadre of visionaries (like Carl Hubbs of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Bob Miller of the University of Michigan, Jim Deacon of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, and Phil Pister of the California Department of Fish and Game) dragged attention to and knowledge of southwest desert fishes from the shadows cast by commercial or sports fishes to the light of widespread recognition of unique adaptations and remarkable diversity in unlikely habitats. As this book attests, early concerns over the demise of desert fishes under an array of human pressures blossomed into periods of discovery and activism driven heavily by the students, younger colleagues and friends of the likes of these leaders. What they began with explorations and field collections, often in the most brutal yet glorious desert country in North America, evolved in recent years into focused field and lab studies of ecology, behavior, physiology, development, genetics and evolutionary history of these fishes, and into conservation-driven “non-game” units of both Federal and State governmental agencies. If Minck were with us today, I suspect even his gruff, self-effacing facade would crack when he read what has been built on the foundation to which he contributed so much. The book begins with a Foreward by JimDeacon that sets the historic stage for what follows and includes some hints at Minckley’s influence on changing of attitudes toward and respect for vanishing native faunas. The two-part Preface begins with comments from Minckley, dated in the same month of his passing, that reflect his view of the long history and rapid demise of native fishes as well as his hope for future conservation efforts. Marsh follows with more focused examples of recent changes that emphasize the dynamism of continuing native fish declines in the face of new introductions of non-native species and expanding populations and geographic ranges of those already in the area. His statement that the book is already out of date due to such changes both understates the long-term value of this work for the future of aquatic biology and conservation in the American Southwest and his own lasting contribution by bringing this project to fruition. The body of this book comprises four chapters: Introduction (5 pp.), The Region and Its Aquatic Habitats (42 pp.), Conservation of a Vanishing biota (5 pp.), and Fishes of the Region (species accounts of native and introduced fishes; 309 pp.). These are followed by a List of Families, Genera and species of fishes treated in the book, as well as English and Spanish common names of those species. A page of Environ Biol Fish (2011) 90:207–210 DOI 10.1007/s10641-010-9729-3