Mollusca From Little South Fork Cumberland River 103 



beneath the Rockcastle Sandstone Member of the Lee Formation began 

 in the 1970s. As of March 1981 there were 11 active and 4 inactive 

 surface mines in the watershed. 



While the fauna of Little South Fork has never been thoroughly 

 surveyed, historical records from the Cumberland River and its tributar- 

 ies provide information about which species had potential access to Lit- 

 tle South Fork. Wilson and Clark (1914) documented the distribution, 

 relative abundance and habitat of mussel resources in the Cumberland 

 River and the lower Big South Fork of the Cumberland River (Table 1) 

 from a commercial standpoint. Shoup and Peyton (1940) provided data 

 on unionids collected from the Tennessee section of Big South Fork. 

 Neel and Allen (1964) surveyed the upper Cumberland River in Ken- 

 tucky from 1947 to 1949, especially the area above Wolf Creek Dam 

 prior to impoundment. Two of the stations collected by Neel and Allen 

 were on Big South Fork — one above Burnside, which corresponds to a 

 Wilson and Clark locality, and the other at Yamacraw (Tables 1 and 2). 



Ortmann (1924, 1925, 1926) provided taxonomic and distributional 

 information pertaining to unionids of the Cumberland River. William- 

 son (1905) reported a limited fauna in the Rockcastle River, a major 

 tributary located in the eastern headwaters of the Cumberland River. 

 Stansbery (1969) reviewed naiad faunal changes at Cumberland Falls 

 based on surveys of Wilson and Clark (1914) and Neel and Allen (1964). 



Recent reports of the naiad fauna of Little South Fork include the 

 work on Pegias fabula by Starnes and Starnes (1980) and the species 

 lists provided by Harker et al. (1979, 1980). Their collection stations, 

 which are from sites that approximate our stations 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 14, and 

 16, have been combined with our data in Table 3. B. Branson and G. 

 Schuster, Eastern Kentucky University (EKU), in 1980 surveyed the 

 lower part of Little South Fork from the Highway 92 crossing down- 

 stream to Freedom Church Ford at approximately our stations 8, 11, 

 12, 14, and 16. Their unpublished unionid data have been combined 

 with our data in Table 3. 



MATERIALS AND METHODS 



In 1977 we initiated qualitative surveys to establish a list of mussel 

 species. Our efforts in 1979 centered around collecting live specimens, 

 determining species assemblages, and estimating upstream distribution 

 limits of unionids. Independently, in 1978 the Kentucky Nature Pre- 

 serves Commission (KNPC) began comprehensive water quality and 

 biological surveys in the Little South Fork (Harker et al. 1979, 1980). In 

 1981 we conducted a quantitative and qualitative survey of the lower 

 Little South Fork. Ten-square foot (0.1 m 2 ) samples were taken along 

 three transects at stations 8, 13, and 16, using a metal frame placed over 



