Biologists recently found the blackside dace in Cox Creek, a small tributary of the North Fork Powell River in Lee County, Virginia. The report is the first record of this threatened fish outside of the upper Cumberland River system. Cox Creek is located just across the divide between the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers systems, and the species may have entered Cox Creek through stream "pirating;" the stream once may have flowed into the Cumberland but some geologic event of the past rerouted the stream to the other side of the divide. This would not be the first example of fauna moving into a new drainage as a result of stream pirating.


Mr. Chris Skelton, an aquatic zoologist with the Georgia Natural Heritage Program and an expert on the genus Phoxinus, notified us that he had identified some 1995 collections from Cox Creek and had found P. cumberlandensis. He also had collected from the stream himself recently and found the species present. Dr. Dave Etnier at University of Tennessee said he had seen the specimens from Cox Creek and felt that Chris Skelton's identification as P. cumberlandensis was a good one. As Dr. Etnier pointed out, these fish could turn out to be an undescribed species closely related to P. cumberlandensis, but for now we have to call them P. cumberlandensis.