Greenside Darter

The greenside darters have an elongated body with a long and rounded snout. The dorsum is greenish-brown, with six or seven dark quadrate saddles and the sides with five to eight dark green, typically U- or W-shaped blotches. The nape, cheeks, opercle, and belly are completely scaled, with the breast naked. The anal fin has six to 10 rays (usually eight) and 13 to 16 pectoral fin rays, and both are bright green in breeding males; caudal fins are yellowish to clear; dorsal fin rays number 12 to 15, with red basal bands; breeding males have intensely bluish-green nasal and oral areas and sometimes black on the head.

The E. blennioides subspecies are believed to have diverged in separate drainage systems and glacial refugia during the Pleistocene ice ages, which destroyed older connections and shaped new river systems.

E. b. blennioides (northern greenside darter) ranges throughout the Ohio River basin and northeast into the Potomac and upper Genesee Rivers. E. b. newmanii (highlands greenside darter) occurs in the Cumberland and Tennessee River drainages of Alabama, Kentucky, and Tennessee; it also occurs in the Arkansas, Ouachita, St. Francis, and White Rivers of Arkansas and Missouri. E. b. pholidotum (central greenside darter) occurs in north-flowing rivers of the northern Ozarks, the Wabash basin, the Maumee River drainage, and along the shores of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.

Etheostoma: etheo meaning filter or strain and stoma meaning mouth E. b. blennioides: referring to its resemblance to the Mediterranean blennies Constantine S. Rafinesque knew in his early years E. b. newmanii: patronymic for Francis H. Newman, aquatic biologist, who collected the type specimen E. b. pholidotum: meaning scaled, referring to its fully scaled belly.