TVA biologist, Yale professor find new fish found only in Tennessee

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The Tennessee Valley Authority is a federally owned electricity corporation. An act of Congress established the company in 1933 to help the Tennessee Valley overcome environmental and economic problems. Now TVA provides power for the entire state of Tennessee and parts of six bordering states. The corporation also provides flood control, navigation and management for the Tennessee River System. The company has a diverse power plant portfolio that includes nuclear, fossil, diesel, hydroelectric, natural gas, solar and wind energy. The corporation funds its own operations by the sale of its electricity to power distributors. Wochit

Behold the Tennessee Logperch.

The fish, a darter, can grow to be 6 inches long. It has flattened little splotches on its flanks. That the splotches are flattened is important; those are what first led TVA aquatic biologist Jeff Simmons and Yale professor Tom Near to suspect they had discovered a new fish.

Simmons explains that finding a new species of fish in the 21st century is more a matter of closely observing what is before our eyes than coming upon a lost island that holds two-headed dragons.

“With new techniques in molecular study, we are starting to see a lot more diversity than we thought,” Simmons said. “Once you investigate and start getting enough data and using DNA testing, you start seeing that there are a lot of differences in fish. I think there is still a wide-open realm of discovery out there.”

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In the case of the Tennessee Logperch, Simmons found the fish while he was studying a closely related species, the Blotchside Logperch.

Back in 2013, Simmons spotted a Blotchside Logperch, itself a rare darter, in East Tennessee.

“I was in the Big South Fork doing some research on mussels when I saw a Blotchside,” he said. “It was a big deal since the fish had not been seen there since 1890.

“A lot of people didn’t believe me, but I started talking to Tom Near, and it opened the door to investigating the group of fish as a whole.”

Near had worked with Simmons on several projects. They agreed the Blotchside deserved more study; and, when scientists decide on further study, the dive gets really deep.

“We needed to thoroughly examine all specimens of this group,” Simmons recalled. “We requested all records of this from all museums and natural history collections in the country. We also went back to all known population areas across the Tennessee River drainage system. I wanted to get my head underwater and see the fish that were there.”

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"I did the hard work of collecting the morphological data from more than 200 specimens," Near said. "The morphological dataset includes nearly every specimen of Tennessee and Blotchside logperches available in museum collections. Also, we were sampling specimens from our field work to fill in sampling holes for both the genetics and morphology ... Jeff began taking the lead in our field work to sample new specimens."

Simmons would snorkel on places like the Buffalo and Duck rivers in Middle Tennessee. He would float or walk with his feet on the river bottom for a half mile or more, bent over with his mask submerged, looking for logperch.

“During the course of all that field work, we discovered a new population of Blotchside,” said Simmons. But, this fish looked a little different.

The Blotchside has long, narrow blotches that stretch all the way down its flanks, but on these fish the blotches were flatter and rounder.

They noticed other slight differences including the color of the males during breeding season.

Simmons said he knew “pretty early on” that what they were looking at was not a Blotchside Logperch but a brand-new fish.

Proving that would take much more research. DNA and other testing provided more differences, but the two had to head back out in the field to make sure their find was unique.

“We had to cover such a large geographic area,” Simmons said. “We also had to do a lot more research to museums and such. It took a few years to cover that kind of ground.”

Simmons said he caught maybe 40 or so of the new fish. The number might seem low; but, he explained, he did not want to over-catch considering the entire population might be on the brink. Also, the little fish are hard to grab.

“It took a couple of field seasons to get this all done,” he said. “I had to use a handheld dip net. They were very specific about where they wanted to be. I had to do this dance with them over and over.”

The result of their studies was an article in the October 2017 issue of the Bulletin of the Peabody Museum of Natural History titled “New Species of Logperch Endemic to Tennessee” that announced the new fish to the scientific community.

Simmons said naming the fish as “percina apina” was easy.

“I was snorkeling one day at Hurricane Creek with this new species and the water was so clear and clean, and the visibility was excellent, and I thought, ‘This fish needs a name that reflects these qualities,’” he said. “So we gave it the name apina, which in Greek describes things that are clean or without dirt.”

Deciding on its more common name, the Tennessee Logperch, was also a no-brainer. The fish has been found only the Tennessee River system, and Simmons sees that as a tribute to one of the most biodiverse river systems in the world.

“This species is lucky to be living in rivers that are in really, really good condition as far as water quality,” he said.

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Keeping the Tennessee Logperch around will require some dedication.

“These fish can disappear, and when they are gone, you will never learn anything new about them,” he said. “It is a real privilege to learn all about these animals. When we start polluting the water, we will lose species like this and ultimately it will come back to affect us. Once you affect one thing, you’re going to start affecting others until it affects us.”

Like Simmons, Near believes the Tennessee Logperch won't be the last new fish discovered in the Tennessee River system.

"Indeed, there is still quite a bit of biodiversity to discover in the Tennessee Basin," he said. "As we apply genetic data, there will be deep divergences discovered, and I suspect most of these divergences will be reflected in  disparity of morphological traits that have been used by biologists since the 1820s to discover and describe species of fishes."