NCFishes.com team members Fritz Rohde and Bryn Tracy with photographic expertise from Scott A. Smith and Jesse L. Bissette, along with six other colleagues and Dr. Robert E. Jenkins (deceased 2023), recently and officially described a new species of freshwater fish that is endemic to North Carolina and South Carolina.
Undescribed, but not unknown, for many years as the “Thinlip” Chub, the fish is now known scientifically as Cyprinella leptocheilus and bears the common name Siouan Thinlip Chub. It is a member of the minnow family Leuciscidae.
Its scientific name, Cyprinella leptocheilus, translates into Cyprinella – a diminutive of cypris, carp, i.e., a small carp or minnow and leptocheilus — leptós (Greek λεπτός), fine or thin; cheilus, from cheíl̄os (Greek χεῖλος), lip—a noun, thin lip. Its common name, Siouan Thinlip Chub (pronounced Soo unn), honors the Carolina Siouan Language Territory of Cheraw, Chicora, Waccamaw, and Pee Dee First Peoples who originally inhabited the region in North Carolina and South Carolina where the species is found today.
Siouan Thinlip Chub is geographically, phenotypically, and genetically distinguishable from the two other closely related barbeled Cyprinella who are also endemic to North Carolina and South Carolina: C. labrosa Thicklip Chub, and C. zanema Santee Chub. Siouan Thinlip Chub is confined to the Sand Hills and Coastal Plain regions of the Carolinas, whereas Thicklip Chub and Santee Chub are more widely distributed in the Piedmont and Eastern Blue Ridge Foothills regions of the Santee (including the Broad, Catawba, Enoree, and Saluda River subbasins) and the upper Yadkin-Pee Dee River basins in the Carolinas and Virginia (Thicklip Chub is now extirpated in Virginia).
The full species description of Siouan Thinlip Chub, including its range map, images, and an identification key on how to separate Siouan Thinlip Chub from Thicklip Chub and Santee Chub may be found at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/sfcproceedings/vol1/iss64/4/.