Cyprinodon Diabolis

Cyprinodon diabolis also known as The Devils Hole pupfish is a well-known little fish that lives in Devils hole in Nevada a very hot and dry state. These fish are known to be one of the world’s most vulnerable fish. It is known to many in the science community that this species has less than 400 adults. They all live in a cavern like area in Devils Hole. Devils hole is a small body of water that opened up 60,000 years ago. (Riggs & Decon,2004) Researchers have some confusion as to when the pupfish actually colonized in Devils Hole. It is strange to some that this one little fish lives in isolation in this one hole in this one spot. Reed and Stockwell Authors of Evaluating an icon of population persistence: the Devil's Hole pupfish did some evaluations of the fish using data from the 1970s on counts of pupfish and they estimated how long it would take for the species to become extinct. They were using this data to find out if the species had persisted for 10,000 years or more. The first thing that Reed and Stockwell did was to study the species and get some background information. This is key …show more content…
The pupfish has such low diversity and population size it probably will not persist very long into the future. Because of this Reed and Stockwell do not believe that this is a good reason for protecting species with small populations. One idea mentioned in the paper is that Native Americans in the area may have put the pupfish into Devils hole, It was noted that they may have been a food source for some, this seems strange since the fish are very small.(Sada & Vinyard, 2002) The conclusion here is that the pupfish is not a case of unusual isolated persistence, although it is noteworthy that they have persisted this