Bonytail
Gila elegans Baird & Girard, 1853
Accepted species in Catalogue of Life’s 11 September 2026 base release. This preserves the source classification and available supporting data; it is not a completed species monograph.
bonytail chub or bonytail, Gila elegans
Brian Gratwicke · CC BY 2.0 · Image sourceProvider-generated thumbnail requested at 320 pixels; no local editing Local WebP display rendition; resized without cropping.
Open encyclopedia reference
The bonytail chub or bonytail (Gila elegans) is a species of freshwater ray-finned fish belonging to the family Leuciscidae, which includes the daces, chubs, Eurasian minnows, and related species. This fish is native to the Colorado River Basin of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming in the Southwestern United States; it has been extirpated from the part of the basin in Mexico. It was once abundant and widespread in the basin, its numbers and range have declined to where it has been listed as endangered since 1980 (Endangered Species Act of 1973) and 1986 (IUCN), a fate shared by the other large Colorado basin endemic fish species such as the Colorado pikeminnow, humpback chub, and razorback sucker. It is now the rarest of the endemic big-river fishes of the Colorado River. Twenty species are in the genus Gila, seven of which are found in Arizona.
Wikipedia contributors, Bonytail chub; see linked history · CC BY-SA 4.0 . Plain-text lead excerpt, at most 180 words; no infobox or later sections Retrieved 2026-10-05T02:31:42.015907+00:00. This reference remains separate from the taxonomic record.
Identity & source status
- Scientific name
- Gila elegans Baird & Girard, 1853
- Name authority
- Baird & Girard, 1853
- Common name
- Bonytail
- Rank
- species
- Accepted status
- accepted
- Kingdom
- Animalia
- Phylum
- Chordata
- Class
- Teleostei
- Order
- Cypriniformes
- Family
- Cyprinidae
- Genus
- Gila
- Extinction status
- Not supplied by this source
Source habitat flags: Marine: no · Freshwater: yes · Terrestrial: no. These do not form a complete habitat description.
Classification family tree
Nested taxonomic groups from the source. This is not a direct-ancestor chain, a dated evolutionary tree or a phylogenetic reconstruction.
- domainEukaryota (Chatton, 1925) Whittaker & Margulis, 1978
- kingdomAnimalia
- phylumChordata
- subphylumVertebrata
- infraphylumGnathostomata
- parvphylumOsteichthyes
- gigaclassActinopterygii
- superclassActinopteri
- classTeleostei
- orderCypriniformes
- familyCyprinidae Rafinesque, 1815
- subfamilyLeuciscinae Bonaparte, 1835
- genusGila Baird & Girard, 1853
- speciesGila elegans Baird & Girard, 1853
Close classified relatives
These entries share the source’s genus, Gila. They are not necessarily the closest relatives established by molecular evidence.
| Species | Classification | Source status |
|---|---|---|
| Gila conspersa Garman, 1881 | CyprinidaeChordata | Accepted speciesExtinction status not supplied |
| Gila cypha Miller, 1946 | CyprinidaeChordata | Accepted speciesExtinction status not supplied |
| Sonora ChubGila ditaenia Miller, 1945 | CyprinidaeChordata | Accepted speciesExtinction status not supplied |
| Mexican Roundtail ChubGila minacae Meek, 1902 | CyprinidaeChordata | Accepted speciesExtinction status not supplied |
| Chihuahua ChubGila nigrescens (Girard, 1856) | CyprinidaeChordata | Accepted speciesExtinction status not supplied |
| Gila orcuttii (Eigenmann & Eigenmann, 1890) | CyprinidaeChordata | Accepted speciesExtinction status not supplied |
| Gila pandora (Cope, 1872) | CyprinidaeChordata | Accepted speciesExtinction status not supplied |
| Yaqui ChubGila purpurea (Girard, 1856) | CyprinidaeChordata | Accepted speciesExtinction status not supplied |
| Gila robusta Baird & Girard, 1853 | CyprinidaeChordata | Accepted speciesExtinction status not supplied |
| Gila seminuda Cope & Yarrow, 1875 | CyprinidaeChordata | Accepted speciesExtinction status not supplied |
| Gila atraria (Girard, 1856) | CyprinidaeChordata | Accepted speciesExtinction status not supplied |
| Shorttail ChubGila brevicauda Norris, Fischer & Minckley, 2003 | CyprinidaeChordata | Accepted speciesExtinction status not supplied |
Names & synonyms
Names explicitly linked to this accepted taxon in the source. Synonymy can change with revision.
| Recorded name | Source status |
|---|---|
| Gila emoryi Baird & Girard, 1853 Baird & Girard, 1853 | synonym |
Source literature & publication evidence
References attached to this source record, including nomenclatural citations where supplied. This is a selected bibliography; abbreviated citations remain in the source’s form.
- Baird, [W.]. (1853). Catalogue of the Species of Entozoa, or Intestinal worms, Contained in the Collection of the British Museum. London: British Museum, 1–132, pls. 1, 2. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.21590 Source fields: Taxon.tsv dwc:namePublishedIn, Taxon.tsv dcterms:references
Origins, evidence & remaining research
Name authority and publication references document nomenclature where the source supplies it. They do not establish evolutionary origins or the earliest fossil occurrence.
Specimen-level evidence, morphology, ecological research, phylogenetic studies, a comprehensive bibliography and a located literary passage have not yet been compiled for this record.
Dataset citation & attribution
This exact taxon in ChecklistBank · Catalogue of Life 2026-09-11
Catalogue of Life 2026-09-11; dataset 316321; doi:10.48580/dgz5n. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . Retrieved 5 October 2026.
Stable key: col:3G2G8. Classification follows source parent identifiers. English common names may vary by region.