CATFISH GENTJS NOTURUS RAFINESQUE 125 



From the Lake Erie basin, flavus has spread northward into Lake 

 Huron to the Bruce Peninsula, Canada, and the Au Sable River, 

 Michigan. It has become distributed throughout the Lake Erie and 

 Ontario basins and is known to range eastward to Lake Champlain, 

 tributaries of the Saint Lawrence River, near Montreal, and has been 

 reported from the Etchemin River, Quebec (Paquet, 1964). 



N. flavus is found in western tributaries to Lake Superior (H. H. 

 Moore and Braem, 1965), undoubtedly arriving from the St. Croix 

 River, a tributary of the Mississippi River. Its spread eastward into 

 Lake Superior is probably limited by cold water. Eddy, Moyle, and 

 Underbill (1963) state that N. flanus is absent from the upper 

 Mississippi River, Minnesota, above St. Anthony Falls, which is 

 an apparent effective barrier to distribution. 



In the Mississippi River basin, jlavus is found throughout most of 

 the Ohio, Cumberland, Tennessee, upper Mississippi, and nearly the 

 entire Missouri River systems. It has crossed from the Missouri, by 

 way of the Osage or Kansas Rivers, into the Arkansas River system. 

 It avoids streams of low gradient and is notably absent, for example, 

 from southern Illinois and other areas of slow runoff. A^^. jlavus has 

 not yet been recorded from the South Platte River and apparently 

 avoids much of the rest of the Platte; otherwise it is known from many 

 of the upper Missouri River tributaries. In the Arkansas drainage, 

 jlavus is known from the Illinois, Neosho, and Verdigris River systems. 

 Records oi jlavus from elsewhere are apparently based on misidentifica- 

 tions. The following is a discussion of the more important of these. 



The inclusion of Texas in the range oi jlavus by Baughman (1950, 

 p. 131) and by other recent writers in general references is an error 

 initiated by S. Garman (1881, p. 89). His material, from San Antonio, 

 Texas, was re-identified by Evermann and Kendall (1894, pp. 78, 96) 

 as Ameiurus [= Ictalurus] natalis. A small specimen of Noturus 

 gyrinus in the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ 24900), 

 collected by Edward Palmer in 1880 from San Antonio, Texas, mis- 

 identified as Noturus jlavus, was examined by me and is undoubtedly 

 the basis of Garman's report. No specimen or record of Ameiurus 

 [Ictalurus] natalis obtained by Palmer from San Antonio has been 

 found in that collection, suggesting that Evermann and Kendall did 

 not examine Garman's material. 



Records of Noturus jlavus by Jordan and Gilbert (1886, p. 7) for 

 Lee's Creek and the Poteau River, near Fort Smith, Arkansas, are 

 probably based on Noturus exilis. These authors did not Ust exilis, 

 a species that is now known from Lee's Creek and was recorded as 

 Schilbeodes insignis by Cross and Moore (1952, p. 407) from many 

 stations in the Poteau River, Oklahoma. In addition, a collection of 

 Jordan and Gilbert's paratypes of Noturus noctumus from the Poteau 



