Back To Sipsey Fork

I hope to go to Sipsey Fork in the Bankhead National Forest next Tuesday to collect silverstripe and burrhead shiners. Both species will be examined for any Dactylogyrus gill flukes, and I'd like to run western blots for NMDA proteins in silverstripe brains since they're a close relative of telescope shiners. So it will be another day of driving out, catching the fish, and coming back to the lab to remove fresh brains into a lysis buffer preliminary to western blots. The working hypothesis is that silverstripes should be like telescopes in terms of having a random sex pattern for NMDA proteins, unlike a strongly sexually dimorphic species like scarlet or tennessee shiners.

We even have official permission from the wildlife biologists of the Forest Service. I called up the office looking for Tom Counts, who wasn't in, but his assistant Allison has graciously emailed me a letter authorizing our visit and seining for shiners. We'll be going to the canoe ramp off of Highway 33, which is reasonably easy access in a drop-dead beautiful stretch of river with eroded limestone cliffs. I'll post pictures, with any luck.