Hey all! I'm actually the one studying Rainbow Shiners for my masters research, as well as the rest of Hydrophlox. Saffron Shiners are most often very common where they occur, and I don't believe they're protected anywhere other than Tennessee, where essentially just about everything is protected. The upper conosauga fish indeed differ greatly from those typical in the aquarium trade, the upper mobile basin fish in general have much less of the blue and/or purple iridescence. There's actually three distinct forms, with integrades between those forms in between. We'll hopefully be publishing are morphological and molecular data on this species later this year!
