Journal of Biogeography (1978) 5, 59-80 Fishes of the Greenbrier river, WestVirginia, with drainage history of the Central Appalachians CHARLES H. HOCUTT*, ROBERT F. DENONCOURTt, and JAY R. STAUFFER, Jr.* *University of Maryland, Appalachian Environmental Laboratory, Center for Environmental and Estuarine Studies, Frostburg State CollegeCampus, Frostburg, Maryland 21532, U.S.A. tDepartment of Biology, York Collegeof Pennsylvania, York, Pennsylvania 17405, U.S.A. ABSTRACT. The Mississippiriver valley was the origin of dispersal of the majority of freshwater fishes east of the Rocky Mountains.The Pliocene Teays riverwas the major drainage from the east-central United States to the ancestral Mississippi. In the north, the Pittsburgh river flowed northward to join the Pliocene Laurentian river. The advance of Pleistocene glaciation broughtabout profound drainage reorganizationand influenced faunal extinctions through ecological changes. Headwatertributaries,remote from the ice fronts, were less severely affected by these changes and served as refugia. The Allegheny-Ohio river eventually succeeded the Teays river as the majoreasterndrainage to the Missis- sippi. The New (upper Kanawha) riverbasin is a remnant of the ancient Teays system. The Greenbrier river, a tributary to New river in West Virginia,was a sub- sequent centre of dispersal of fishes as the Pleistocene ice front receded. Major captures occurred with the Monongahela river to enhance dispersal, but were not limited to that drainage. A total of fifty-three fish species is presently known from the Greenbrier river, with eighteen others listed as expected. The depau- perate fauna is influenced by limiting factors associated with the New river --4-to Introduction The Greenbrier river is located in eastern West Virginia and flows 274.7 km from northern Pocahontas County to enter the New river at Hinton, W.Va., just below Bluestone Dam (Fig. 1). It drains over 4000 km2 and is associated with several sink areas, including the karst region of Greenbrier County (Jones, 1973). Reed (1974) reports widths of from 15 to 61 m and depths to 4.5 m; however, in general it is not a particularly deep river. The less resistant and younger Monongahela, Kanawha and Mississippi sandstones and shales to the west are drained by the Elk and Gauley rivers. The area to the east is drained hv the Potomaic and TJmpe rivprc xwhi;1ce tributaries of the Monongahela and Potomac rivers drain the headwater areas to the north. Further information relative to these areas is presented in Campbell (1896a), Wright (1934), Addair (1944), Schwartz (1965) and Reed (1974). In ichthyological literature, the New river system is synonymous with the upper Kanawha river system, i.e. that portion above Kanawha Falls (Denoncourt et al., 1975). The New River drainage is an area with a high degree of endemism. The U.S. Depart- ment of Interior has identified twenty-three species of plants and animals as being endemic to this area (J.D. Williams, personal communi- cation). Included are four fish species, three 0305-0270/78/0300-0059 $02.00 ? 1978 BlackwellScientificPublications 59