It Feels Like All Scarlet Shiners, All The Time

I talked to Alexandra yesterday morning about how we can best organize and present the data she's generated about silverstripe shiners about sex-based differences in brain size. My assumption was that we also had telescope and scarlet shiner data that's equivalent, with measurements of brain volume and the volume of individual parts of the brain such as the optic tectum. And we do indeed have this data for telescope shiners, generated by Alexandra and Brittany last year. But when I tried to find the data I "knew" we had for scarlet shiners, I couldn't find it. Because, of course, we never had it... Enrique did brain measurements but he seems to have disappeared with that data. We have data on brain mass, but nothing on volume. After several minutes of feeling like a total maroon, I realized that we have to generate our own for this paper. So, I've asked Alexandra to do this with a group of formaldehyde-fixed scarlet shiners we captured last June, at peak breeding season. So far we've only used these fish for gill parasite work, so they're in good condition with the brains ready to go. That's irritating but nothing else we can do about it.

And we made our September collection of scarlet shiners today at Limestone Creek in Limestone County. Andrew and Taito went out with me on a somewhat cool but sunny day. The water was about 35 cm higher than any time this year, and flowing very fast, and was cool but not too cool for wading. We were able to collect 40 scarlets by concentrating on areas sheltered from the strongest current. Taito brought his camera so we have some photos, which I hope to post once he emails them to me. One of them might be of me standing in an area of high flow looking stunned, we'll see.