Two Fish From Monday's Trip

This lunker (at least for a minnow) is a striped shiner (Luxilus chrysocephalus) we collected on Monday at Swan Creek at Elkton Road just north of Athens in Limestone County, Alabama. I was wrong before; he's only 12 cm long, snout tip to the base of the tail, not 14 cm. This picture was taken just after he was euthanized through an overdose of MS-222, a fish anesthetic (same with the photo below). MS-222 tends to release all of a fish's colors just after death.

Here is the colored-up male scarlet shiner (Lythrurus fasciolaris) I mentioned the other day. He was collected in Limestone Creek at Highway 53 in Madison County, Alabama. This fish is about 7 cm long, snout tip to the base of the tail. If you look closely you can see tubercles on top of his head and the front part of his back, typical of all male cyprinid minnows in breeding condition. This guy is part of our gill parasite study. But we'll be collecting more scarlet shiners soon so that we can quantify the coverage and intensity of the various reds and oranges on the fins, which should be indicative of attractiveness to females (we think...).

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