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Richard J. Bryant, et al. 
however, indicating much healthier populations than at the type locality, 
but these populations are also undoubtedly now extirpated. The South 
Fork Holston localities are either impounded or are tailwaters supporting 
cold-adapted fishes (Jenkins and Burkhead 1975). The North Toe River 
has been subjected to extensive siltation from mica strip mining in North 
Carolina (Jenkins and Burkhead 1972, Saylor and Etnier 1976). The 
mica and feldspar dust smothers the eggs and eliminates the interstitial 
microhabitat of the darters. In recent years siltation of the North Toe has 
been aggravated by highway construction that parallels the river nearly to 
its headwaters. 
Exhaustive attempts by Jenkins and Burkhead (1975) to obtain E. 
acuticeps in the Holston drainage in 1972 resulted in only three specimens. 
These were taken in the South Fork Holston River just above the im- 
pounded portion of South Holston Reservoir, where there apparently is 
enough habitat to support a small and extremely tenuous population. In 
the fall of 1975, Charles Saylor and a TV A field crew looking for the Snail 
darter, Percina tanasi , discovered the Sharphead darter in the Nolichucky 
River between Davy Crockett and Douglas Reservoirs (Saylor and Etnier 
1976). Davy Crockett Reservoir had acted as a settling basin and pro- 
tected the lower Nolichucky population from the siltation that eliminated 
the North Toe population. The discovery of this very healthy population 
allowed better understanding of the exact microhabitat of the Sharphead 
darter and fueled speculation by D. Etnier (pers. comm.) that the species 
may exist in larger tributaries of the Nolichucky that are relatively free of 
siltation. Bailey (1977) considered the Sharphead darter extirpated in 
North Carolina, however, as it had not been collected in the state in 47 
years. v 
