The Verdict Is In: Female Telescope Shiners Are Bigger Than Males

It's a relationship that only a fish geek can love (or appreciate?). With the data I have to date from our monthly collections of telescope shiners since February, the females are longer than the males, 50.5 mm average length for females (117 individuals) vs. 45.3 mm for the males (140 individuals). Comparing the two data sets with a t-test shows that they are statistically significantly different with a p<<.001, i.e. a decisive value. This is interesting in of itself, but it's different from the telescopes' near relative, the silverstripe shiner, in which I found that on average females are slightly longer but not significantly so. One advantage to larger body size for a female fish would be the ability to produce more eggs. I don't know if that's what drives this relationship here, though, since we haven't explicitly looked for the relevant factors.

In other news, thanks to everyone who has mentioned the Discovering Alabama episode. The one thing people have remarked on is that I never wear a lab coat and they find it funny that I'm wearing one in the episode. Even worse, that lab coat doesn't fit but luckily it's not obvious. Maybe I should go out and get a nice size 50 long lab coat that's stylishly cut? We'll see....