About Rhinichthys klamathensis (Evermann & Meek, 1898)
The Western speckled dace, with the scientific name Rhinichthys klamathensis, is a species of freshwater ray-finned fish in the family Leuciscidae, which includes shiners, daces, and minnows. This species is native to the Klamath, Warner, and Sacramento drainage systems located in California and Oregon, United States. It was first formally described in 1898 by American ichthyologists Barton Warren Evermann and Seth Eugene Meek. The authors gave the type locality of the species as the mouth of a creek in Pelican Bay, Upper Klamath Lake, Klamath County, Oregon. This taxon was previously classified as a subspecies of the speckled dace, Rhinichthys osculus. In 2023, Peter B. Moyle, Nicholas Buckmaster, and Yingxin Su confirmed that R. klamathensis is a valid species, and that it contains three recognized subspecies: the Klamath Western speckled dace (R. k. klamathensis), the Sacramento speckled dace (R. k. achomawi), and the Warner speckled dace (R. k. goyatoka).
