Cyprinodon tularosa, a New Cyprinodontid Fish from the Tularosa Basin, New Mexico

Abstract

The White Sands pupfish, Cyprinodon tularosa, is described from the Tularosa basin, New Mexico, the site of Pleistocene Lake Otero. Although that lake did not overflow, it is inferred that there was a pre-Wisconsin connection with the Rio Grande basin in order to permit entry of the pupfish into the endorheic basin. The new species, a member of the Cyprinodon variegatus complex, is evidently closest to C. bovinus of western Texas, from which it differs in certain meristic and morphometric characters (smaller scales, fewer pelvic rays, more gill rakers), female color pattern, and in the breeding colors of the male. Both species may have arisen from a C. variegatus-like ancestor during Pleistocene time. The endorheic Tularosa basin of southern New Mexico has at- tracted the attention of physiographers and biologists since Herrick (1904) proposed the name Lake Otero for the body of water that oc- curred there during Pleistocene time. The basin was later described in detail by Meinzer and Hare (1915) who demonstrated that its lake did not overflow into the Rio Grande. Plant and animal ecologists in particular have studied the response of organisms to life on the exposed white gypsum sands and adjacent black lava flows of the region, and the area attained world prominence in 1941 as the site of the explosion of the first atomic bomb. According to Kottlowski (1958), Lake Otero was a series of salinas that probably attained maximum extent during glacio-pluvial (Wis- consin) time as a contemporary of other pluvial lakes in the now arid American West (Feth 1961). The presence of a fish in some of the remnant springs and creeks of the Tularosa basin supports the view (Hubbs and Miller 1948) that there was a pre-Wisconsin hydro- graphic connection to the south with what is now the Rio Grande basin. Although various aspects of the biology of terrestrial vertebrates in the Tularosa basin have been treated (e.g., by Blair 1943, and refer- ences cited therein; Lewis 1949, 1950; and Dixon 1967), one of the