Every member of the species Cyprinodon diabolis, the Devils Hole pupfish, lives and reproduces in a desert pool ten-feet across by sixty-feet long. In recent years, managers from Death Valley National Park have observed as few as thirty-five individual fish in this habitat. The whole species could fit in a pint glass and lives a habitat the size of a city bus.
A part of my book manuscript, this paper examines the science of naming and classifying the pupfish. Environmental historians are experts at showing how endangered species become embedded in the social, especially in fights over conservation, development, and identity. This paper elaborates on this body of work by integrating an insight from the history of science: “species” themselves are not neutral, timeless categories, but produced through a social-scientific process.
Focusing on the history of early twentieth century ichthyology, I show how the methods of collecting, storing, and classifying (through morphometric analysis) enabled the fish from Devils Hole to be defined as their own unique species. This process had important implications for the pupfish’s conservation—especially in the decision to add the habitat to the national park system—but also entailed substantial risk to the fish through the overcollecting of specimens. Scientists may have “saved” the pupfish through their naming, but simultaneously endangered them through the same process.
