We've Seen Gill Flukes, Spawning Tennessee Shiners, A Buncha Stuff

We went out to Estill Fork today and caught our target fishes of scarlet, telescope and striped shiners, for gut content analysis and also to look at brain structure and general length/weight relationships. It went well, with lower water levels, six students went out with me. But we saw this amazing swarm of tennessee shiners in breeding color spinning around with females entering the swarm of males; scarlet shiners were on the outside, also doing a heavy spawning thing. Here's my best photo of the swarm; every time I approached them they moved off.

The males are bright orange, and the females aren't, a classic case of sexual dimorphism. This species, Notropis leuciodus, is in a sub-genus that includes other very sexually dimorphic species such as the rainbow shiners from the Alabama River drainage.

We've been working on gut content analysis and gill flukes. We have some good photos of the latter, hopefully I'll post some in the next few days.