Larval Fish Laboratory



Downloadable Keys, Guides and Bibliography

Guides and Keys to Larval and Early Juvenile Fishes

The following files are early life stage identification guides and keys to the catostomid and cyprinid fishes of the Upper Colorado and Gila river basins and to the families of fishes in the Gila River Basin; also, a draft early life stage key to the families of fishes in U.S. and Canadian fresh waters. The key data files require and are accessed by the host computer-interactive software program DELTA-INTKEY, which must first be installed on your computer (instructions follow) or run from a CD or online source. Once up and running and if so desired, the keys can be limited to consider only user selected taxa or taxa in predefined regions or basins (e.g., in the Upper Colorado River Basin key, only species in the Yampa River or in the North American family-level key, only families found in Upper Colorado River Basin or Great Lakes region.

To use the keys:

  1. Download and install the INTKEY software without cost from the DELTA-Intkey website.  Default location for software installation is C:/Delta
  2. Download one or more of the larval fish keys below. These are compressed files; save and decompress them in the default folder C:/Delta/doc or other desired folder. 
  3. Start INTKEY software and "Select data set" by browsing the directory where the data sets are stored and open the preferred interactive key.  The name of each data set as used by INTKEY is shown below in itallics.
Important! To save files to your hard drive and NOT open them, right-click on the file name and select either "Save Target As..." if your browser is Internet Explorer, or "Save Link As..." if your browser is Firefox.
Gila River Basin

Snyder, D. E., K. R. Bestgen, and S. C. Seal. 2005. Native Cypriniform fish larvae of the Gila River Basin- morphological descriptions, comparisons, and computer-interactive keys Contribution 143 of the Larval Fish Laboratory, Colorado State University. pdf (109 MB)

Key to the Catostomids (639 KB)  data set name intkey-cat-grb

Key to the Cyprinids (686 KB)  data set name intkey-cyp-grb-r

Key to the Families (475 KB)  date set name intkey-fam-grb

Upper Colorado River Basin

Snyder, D. E. and R. T. Muth. 2004.  Catostomid fish larvae and early juveniles of the Upper Colorado River Basin - morphological descriptions, comparisons, and computer-interactive key Colorado Division of Wildlife Technical Publication 42; Contribution 139 of the Larval Fish Laboratory, Colorado State University. pdf (42 MB)

Key to the Catostomids (696 KB) data set name intkey-ucrb

Key to the Cyprinids (Work in progress)

North America (United States And Canada)

Key to the Families (489 KB) data set name intkey-fam-na

Bibliography - Early Life History of Fishes

2002 update of: Hoyt, R. D. 1988. A Bibliography of the early life history of fishes.; volume 1, list of titles. Dept. of Biology, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green. (Updated by D. E. Snyder and T. Kennedy; importable text file compressed as ELHBIB20.ZIP; 932 KB.)

Original Site Layout

Original cik-data

INTKEY, the host program for these key data files, can be downloaded without cost from:http://delta-intkey.com, select “Programs and Documentation,” then “Intkey".

fishbib

zip  ELHBIB20.zip (932 KB)

exe  pkz204g.exe (198 KB)

pdf-doc

pdf  Snyder_and_Muth_2004.pdf (* 42 MB)

pdf  Snyder_et_al_2005-Gila_Guide_Final_Report-r2.pdf (* 109 MB)

You are here: WCNR Downloadable Keys, Guides and Bibliography
Academic Departments:

© 2012 Warner College of Natural Resources
Apply to CSU |Equal Opportunity | Disclaimer | Privacy | Search CSU
Contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.