Fishes of the Greenbrier River, West Virginia, with Drainage History of the Central Appalachians

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Abstract
The Mississippi river valley was the origin of dispersal of the majority of freshwater fishes east of the Rocky Mountains. The Pliocene Teays river was the major drainage from the east-central United States to the ancestral Mississippi. In the north, the Pittsburgh river flowed northward to join the Pliocene Laurentian river. The advance of Pleistocene glaciation brought about profound drainage reorganization and influenced faunal extinctions through ecological changes. Headwater tributaries, remote from the ice fronts, were less severely affected by these changes and served as refugia. The allegheny-Ohio river eventually succeeded the Teays river as the major eastern drainage to the Mississippi. The New (upper Kanawha) river basin is a remnant of the ancient Teays system. The Greenbrier river, a tributary to New river in West Virginia, was a subsequent centre of dispersal of fishes as the Pleistocene ice front receded. Major captures occurred with the Monongahela river to enhance dispersal, but were not limited to that drainage. A total of fifty-three fish species is presently known from the Greenbrier river, with eighteen others listed as expected. The depauperate fauna is influenced by limiting factors associated with the New river system.

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