Description
Pupfish, such as the Shoshone pupfish, exhibit many adaptions for life in extreme thermal and osmotic environments. Pupfish growth is rapid and sexual maturity is reached within four to six weeks. This short generation time enables pupfish to maintain small but viable populations. Among the subspecies, however, there are minor differences in generation times, with pupfish in habitats with widely fluctuating environmental conditions exhibiting the shortest.
Shoshone pupfish like other C. nevadensis subspecies had wide temperature tolerances (2 to 44 °C); however, the preferred range is 24 to 30 °C. Extreme temperatures affect egg production and viability, thus any alterations to their habitat that would result in temperature changes outside the range of their reproductive temperature optima are potentially deleterious. Eggs, however, become resistant to environmental stresses within hours of being laid.
Shoshone pupfish, like other pupfishes, feed primarily on blue-green cyanobacteria but also consume small invertebrates like chironomid larvae, ostracods, and copepods. They forage continuously from sunrise to sunset and become inactive at night. Their guts are extremely long and convoluted, an adaptation that enables them to digest cyanobacteria.
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