Fishes of Buck Creek, 

 Cumberland River Drainage, Kentucky 



Ronald R. Cicerello 



Kentucky Nature Preserves Commission, 



Frankfort, Kentucky 40601 



AND 



Robert S. Butler 



Department of Biology, 



Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, Kentucky 40475 



ABSTRACT. — Fifty-nine personal fish collections and museum 

 records from thirty-nine sites in the drainage of Buck Creek, a major 

 tributary to the upper Cumberland River below Cumberland Falls in 

 Kentucky, revealed a total of seventy-three species and one hybrid, 

 representing thirteen families. New records for the upper Cumberland 

 River drainage in Kentucky included Ictiobus bubalus, I ctalurus f mea- 

 tus, and Lepomis microlophus. Notropis ariommus and Etheostoma 

 cinereum, two species assigned protection status in Kentucky, are 

 known from Buck Creek, but E. cinereum has not been collected since 

 1955. Analysis of faunal resemblance of species collected at twenty-one 

 sites along the Buck Creek mainstem revealed three faunal units. The 

 pattern of longitudinal distribution along the mainstem involved addi- 

 tion of species in the middle stream section to those present in the 

 upper section and replacement in the lower section by forms typical of 

 low-gradient, big-river habitats. 



INTRODUCTION 



The upper Cumberland River basin upstream from the Tennessee 

 border drains 13,416 sq km of eastern Kentucky (Mayes et al. 1975) and 

 contains many of the highest quality streams remaining in Kentucky 

 (Harker et al. 1980; Hannan et al. 1982). Although the fishes of the 

 upper Cumberland River basin have been the subject of numerous pub- 

 lished collections, distributional lists, and descriptions (e.g., Jordan and 

 Swain 1883; Kirsch 1892, 1893; Woolman 1892; Evermann 1918; Jen- 

 kins et al. 1972; Starnes and Starnes 1978; Harker et al. 1979, 1980; 

 Burr 1980; Stauffer et al. 1982), thorough ichthyofaunal surveys of trib- 

 utaries within the drainage have been conducted on only the Big South 

 Fork Cumberland River (Comiskey 1970; Comiskey and Etnier 1972) 

 and Rockcastle River (Small 1970). Because of this paucity of informa- 

 tion, we initiated our study of the fishes of the Buck Creek drainage. 

 The study, based on personal collections and museum records, aug- 

 ments the limited published faunal information available for the drain- 

 age (Carter and Jones 1969; Harker et al. 1979, 1980). 



Brimleyana No. 1 1:133-159, October 1985 133 



