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y <br />pulchella (Baird and Girard,1854:29) on the basis of two specimens taken in 1851 from <br />-the Mimbres niver north of Deming, New Mexico. Alth©ugh the original description <br />gave the type locality as "Rio Mimbres, tributary of the Gila", which was <br />subsequently changed (Girard, 1859:63) to "Rio Mimbres, tributary of Lake <br />Guzman, Mexico", careful study by William J. Koster of the route of the <br />collector, John H. Clark, showed that the specimens actually came from New <br />Mexico. There is no Rio Mimbres in 'Chihuahua, Mexico, despite Meek's (1904: <br />map opp. xlvii) placement of it there. <br />The Chihuahua chub was next described (Girard, 1856:207) as Tigoma <br />nigrescens from the Rio Casas Grandes basin (Rio Janos, Boca Grande) in Chihuahua, <br />Mexico. Although pulchella is the older name, it cannot be used because Gunther <br />(1868:207) united Gila with Leuciscus and thus brought into secondary homonymy <br />Gila pulchella and Leuc scus pulchellus Storer, 1839 (a synonym of the eastern <br />North American fallfish, Semotilus corporalis). Articles 57 and 59b-c of The <br />International Code of Zoological Nomenclature make unavailable for use any <br />secondary homonym rejected prior to 1960. Jordan and Evermann (1896:234) also <br />rejected Gila pulchella and chose Tigoma nigrescens on the basis of secondary <br />homonymy, although their concept of Leuciscus nigrescens included several <br />currently recognized species of Gila and their description was based chiefly on <br />Gila pandora. <br />The demise of the Chihuahua chub from the United States portion of its <br />range was twice reported prematurely. Koster (1957:57) said it was gone from <br />the Mimbres River, probably because of the introduction of the longfin dace, <br />A osa chrysogaster Girard. Miller (1961) "confirmed" its disappearance on the <br />basis that Carl L. Hubby and family collected in the Mimbres River in 1938, y <br />took no chubs, and were told by a Dr. Royal that in 1884, when the river had <br />more water and many deep holes, he commonly caught 6-inch "Gila trout", the <br />local name for Gila nigrescens. At the time of the Hubby' visit no 'longfin <br />dace were found but Notropis formosus (now extinct in the Mimbres) was taken. <br />In May and June, 1975, 124 years after its last collection there, Gila nigrescens <br />was "rediscovered" in the Mimbres River by Bill Rogers, ahigh-school science teacher <br />and principal under contract for stream-survey work with the New Mexico <br />Department of Game and Fish (Rogers, 1975, unpubl. rept. cited by Hubbard et al., <br />1978). Two specimens were obtained.. In late March 1979, 10 adult chubs were <br />removed from the river by Michael D. Hatch, employee of the same organization, <br />for propagation at the Dexter National Fish. Hatchery in Chaves County, New <br />Mexico, a federally-supported endangered species facility. The transplanted <br />stock has spawned successfully in a half-acre pond and it is planned to <br />reintroduce the chub into ,the Mimbres after a suitable refuge is made available. <br />The present paper discusses the current population status and habitat <br />requirements of the Chihuahua chub throughout its known range in four disjunct <br />rivers and the endorheic basin of Laguna Bustillos in New Mexico and Mexico <br />(Fig. 1). All Mexican localities are in northern Chihuahua. A survey was <br />made from 4 May to 4 June 1979, financed by the Albuquerque office of the U.S. <br />Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Contract Nd. <br />14-16-0002-79-142). We found the species at 8 of 16 reported localities, but <br />it was abundant at only 3 of these stations -essentially a single station <br />(numbers 5 and 6) in the Rio Casas Grandes and two (numbers 8 and 9) in the <br />Rio Santa Maria (Fig. 1). Abbreviations used below are: ASU (Arizona State <br />i~ <br />