GSI Data Update For Telescope Shiners

We now have 7 months' worth of gonadosomatic index (GSI) data for telescope shiners out of Hurricane Creek at the Walls of Jericho. The data for both males and females (below) clearly show June as the peak spawning month, with everything completely wrapped up by August. I'm impressed that we find the exact same pattern for both males and females, with slower rises to a sudden spike in June followed by fall-off. The telescope shiner breeding season was certainly over by the end of July. We'll be going back to the Walls on Sept. 8 which should pretty much close the book on the warm season. We might try to find some young fish too, just to see what they look like.

Meanwhile, Jennifer is re-running ELISAs on five scarlet shiners' blood plasma for 11-ketotesterone today. She should get the results tomorrow morning after washing off the plates and scanning the resulting color. The five fish in question are those whose initial ELISA results were very high, which is believable, but they were at the very top of the standard concentration curve. Instead of running samples at a dilution of 1:100, we're running them at 1:1000 and 1:10,000. In life these fish were completely jacked up on 11-KT. If this goes well, that should wrap up Jennifer's ELISA work and she can move on to analyzing digital images of these fish for intensity of body and fin color.

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