We're Getting Ready....

to run 11-ketotestosterone (11-KT) ELISAs on scarlet shiners. I should say Jennifer is, really. Her first test run demonstrated that she has to purify the blood plasma using diethyl ether and nitrogen gas, which concentrates hydrophobic substances such as 11-KT so that the sensitive ELISA test won't give false readings. It's a good chance that once the purifications are done she'll soon have a good data set.

I also edited the previous entry about the Coon Creek trip. I'd forgotten that we'd found a thirteenth species, northern hogsucker. Still not high diversity but a little better. After kicking this around on the NANFA Forum, Dave Neely rightfully pointed out that this touches on a puzzle about the distribution of fishes in the Alabama/middle Tennessee stretch of tributaries to the Tennessee River. At the corners of this region there is high fish diversity, such as Bear Creek and Cypress Creek to the west and Chickamauga Creek to the east. But especially along the western edge of Sand Mountain, tributaries such as Coon Creek have low diversity. No one has any one really good idea why, which begs for some kind of deeper research. I'm also sending the two sculpins we collected to Dave for his analysis, since he's worked with sculpins a lot. It turns out there is no museum material for sculpins out of this creek or nearby creeks, so these sculpins may help explain the broader diversity patterns sculpins in the Tennessee valley. I'll keep you posted!