December Telescope Shiners

Andrew gave me the data set for the length/weight measurements of the 42 telescope shiners we collected in early December at Estill Fork. The graph is below. The interesting part of this is that there is a very high r-squared value of 0.95 for the linear relationship between length and weight. This relationship is much weaker (lower value) for telescope shiners we've collected in warm weather, during breeding season. During breeding season the females and males have very different relationships, since the females become heavy with eggs. But in December, both sexes have regressed gonads and their overall body shape/size seems to be indistinguishable. Anyway, see for yourself:


The bummer for the week is that we won't be going out to Estill Fork this Friday. I realized that I have to meet with the Dean at 1:30, so that prevents our planned trip at noon. The day is supposed to be warm, too, with temps over 60 F. But next Friday looks good in the forecast, so hopefully we can get out then.