The Finished Telescope Shiner Gill Fluke Picture

We now have all 8 months of telescope shiner collections from the Walls of Jericho analyzed for gill fluke infection. If I remember correctly this represents 256 individual fish. I want to thank Andrew, Joey, Sabrina and Alan for their work this summer in removing gills, staining them, and examining them microscopically for the presence of Dactylogyrus gill flukes. The most obvious feature of the graph below is a spring peak of infection followed by a sharp drop off in August and September. This is very similar to the pattern of gonadal maturation in telescope shiners, which also peaks from April to July. So the fish spawn while carrying their maximum parasite load, apparently. I still have to run the monthly parasite numbers through ANOVA to ascertain the statistical significance of apparent month to month differences in average parasite infection. The error bars are one standard error.