Description:
The Southern Cavefish has a disjunct distribution occurring in the Ozark Mountains in Missouri and Arkansas, the lower Ohio River Drainage, including the Tennessee and Cumberland river drainages in Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, and a few isolated populations in the Mobile Basin in Alabama. They live over a variety of substrates in underground pools and streams. Southern Cavefish are completely adapted for life in total darkness, lacking eyes, pigment, and pelvic fins, as well as having extensive sensory canals and papillae to detect water movement to navigate, find prey, and avoid predation.