Borax Lake chub
species of fish
The Borax Lake chub (Epizon boraxobius) is a species of freshwater ray-finned fish belonging to the family Leuciscidae, which includes the daces, chubs, Eurasian minnows and related fishes. This is a rare species which is found only in outflows and pools around Borax Lake, a small lake of the Alvord basin, Harney County, Oregon.
This species typically reaches only 2.0 inches (5 cm) in length, although some are as long as 4.3 inches (11 cm). The back is generally a dark olive green, while the sides are silvery, with a dark line extending from gill cover to tail, and a scattering of dark melanophores. The fins are colorless, with more melanophores on the rays of the dorsal fin and tail, as well as on the first four rays of the pectoral fins. Similar in many ways to the Alvord chub, the Borax Lake species has a longer, wider, and deeper head, and larger eyes, and the caudal peduncle is more slender.
The Borax Lake chub eats a variety of foods, including midge larvae, diatoms, copepods, ostracods, and terrestrial insects. Its preferred mode of feeding is to root around in the bottom, but it will go after floating material or feed from the surface if necessary.
This species is the sole fish inhabiting the Borax Lake waters. While parts of the lake itself can, at times, rise to about 100 °F (38 °C) fed from thermal springs, the average temperature ranges between 61–95 °F (16–35 °C).
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This entry incorporates text from “Borax Lake chub” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.