It is native to North America where it typically occurs in the sandy or gravelly shallows of lakes and in small and medium-sized rivers in riffles over sand, gravel or rock bottoms.

Communal spawning occurs in the spring and early summer in upstream areas with moderate to fast current and over fine gravel or small rocks.

The channel darter is a benthic feeder, consuming insects that live on the substrate such as mayfly and midge larvae.

In some places this fish is threatened by habitat loss due to sedimentation and deteriorating water quality from agricultural and urban development.

The introduced round goby (Neogobius melanostomus) may also compete with the channel darter for space and resources and is a potential predator of eggs.

However, overall the channel darter has a wide range and large total population with many sub-populations, no particular threats have been identified and the International Union for Conservation of Nature has rated it as a "least concern species".

[1] The channel darter was first formally described as Rheocrypta copelandi in 1877 by the American zoologist David Starr Jordan (1851–1931) with the type locality given as the White River in Indiana, 5 miles north of Indianapolis.