Gad, I'm Waiting For Money

I'm hanging tight waiting for money to be available in a research account so that I can get some stippled studfish DNA sequenced. The summer school semester has started which has various busynesses I have to deal with, but by Thursday I hope to look at our most recent collection of snubnose darters. Until then, I've got Hawkwind's song "Quark, Strangeness and Charm" going through my head.....

The Snubnose Darters At Estill Fork Are:

Mostly Tennessee Snubnoses, Etheostoma simoterum rather than the similar Black Darters, E. duryi. I base this on examining about 15 individuals I collected on May 1 with the Florida gang. The fundamental difference between the two species is that the Tennessees have a frenum (like a groove) over their "upper lip", and the Blacks don't. I finally sat down this afternoon and examined all of the individuals under a dissecting 'scope to determine frenum or not. The only Blacks in my collection were two large, colored-up males we found downstream from our typical collecting spot, across from the Baptist church. This is of interest to me because I've been hazy on which species is more common in the stream. In principle the Tennessees should be more common, since they generally dominate highland streams where their range overlaps with Blacks, while the Blacks are more common in streams with a direct connection to the Tennessee River. My intention is to examine both species for gill parasites, assuming we find enough Black Darters to make a meaningful comparison. I also have a bunch of snubnose darters we collected last Friday at our normal site to examine, hopefully tomorrow.

we Have Clean Bifax DNA, And A Morning At Estill Fork

The big whoopie news is that Joe has been working with our Fundulus bifax DNA using the updated protocols from CleanGene, and we actually have good concentrations of amplified DNA bands cut from gels. There are 15 such cleaned samples, 10 bifax and 5 outgroups including F. catenatus and F. stellifer. I hope to get them sequenced soon (and how!).

I went to Estill Fork with Brittany and Josh today since it's the new moon. We ran the drift net in the slow, shallow current, and also netted telescope and scarlet shiners. This was Josh's first trip, he's signed on to do work this summer looking at gill parasites of black & tennessee snubnose darters which we also netted today. Here's a picture of Josh and Brittany as we were measuring water temperature and total dissolved solids.

Water level is low, and the emergent plants are growing out in what's often stream bed. Here's the view of the area we work in and catch fish, with the drift net installed in the right center of this shot.

I'm off next week, summer school begins the following Monday...

We Were At Dauphin Island Thursday & Friday,

and we didn't see any evidence of oil on the beach. There were lots of emergency clean-up crews just hanging out, and the bayside harbor was behind a boom. We went swimming at the public beach Friday morning pretty much exactly where they were finding tar balls on Saturday. As a devil's advocate thought, it's not impossible that scattered oil tars could come from sources other than the spill; there was also an unusual amount of trash along the beach such as fresh chopped lettuce and onion peel that could come from a ship. But, of course, with ~200,000 gallons a day of crude leaking not that far away, the tar balls may well be from that new, improved source of pollution. Dauphin Island businesses have been dying since the leak began as tourists stay away in droves. I can only hope that the leak is stopped quickly, and that various crude oil fractions don't hit the beaches on Dauphin Island or anywhere for that matter.

I Was Interviewed By Local TV 31 Today

I was interviewed this afternoon by a local Huntsville station, 31, about the Gulf oil spill. I never claimed to be doing major research on this, and the seven students are going to the Dauphin Island Sea Lab for summer school courses. The interview takes place in the lab where I teach Vertebrate Zoology, which the students and I cleaned up before the interview. I'm happy with what I said, so here's the video:

Wait! There Are 15 Darter Species In The Paint Rock River

After further discussion on the NANFA Forum, thanks to Matt and Todd, the improved list of darter species in the Paint Rock River is now up 15. I had plain forgotten to add two of the most common species to the list (redline and rainbow), and the river darter may be present in the lower reaches but at least has been seen there in the past. So, it's a pretty good total for such a small river system, running from the edge of an escarpment of the Cumberland plateau in Tennessee a relatively short distance south to the Tennessee River.
Logperch, Percina caprodes
Blotchside Logperch, P. burtoni
Snail Darter, P. tanasi
Dusky Darter, P. sciera
River Darter, P. shumardi
Black Snubnose Darter, Etheostoma duryi
Tennessee Snubnose Darter, E. simoterum
Rainbow Darter, E. caeruleum
Redline Darter, E. rufilineatus
Banded Darter, E. zonale
Greenside Darter, E. blenniodes
Blueside Darter, E. jessiae
Johnny Darter, E. nigrum
Fantail Darter, E. flabellare
Stripetail Darter, E. kennicotti

Make That Twelve Darter Speices In The Paint Rock River

Matt Ashton pointed out on the NANFA Forum that there's a twelfth darter species in the Paint Rock River: Dusky Darter, Percina sciera. This is more of a large stream species, found in the lower Paint Rock where I've rarely collected fish.

Darters Of The Paint Rock River, Alabama

I went out yesterday to the upper Paint Rock River with a group of visitors, mostly from Florida but including Tony Terceira from Rhode Island. Tony is a long-time active member of the American Killifish Association and well-known as an excellent fish photographer. I've corresponded with Tony off and on over the years but never met him, so it was good to spend the day running around a creek with him. Also on the trip were the two Dougs from Florida, Brian from Florida, and Ken and his wife Lisa from Florida. These people also go on ecotours of Peru and other interesting ecosystems, Alabama could probably develop this too if we don't destroy everything first.

Of course we found an astonishing diversity of fish at the two sites we visited, and everyone made a lot of pictures using various fish photoboxes (I hope to have some of these photos soon). We caught and released huge male stonerollers and striped shiners, lit up in colors and tubercles they only have during the spawning season. We also caught several heavily tubercled male minnows that I didn't recognize at the time; they were super-alpha male bluntnose minnows, much bigger than the usual bluntnoses we see with enhanced scale pigmentation.

And for the first time in this system I saw a banded darter, Etheostoma zonale. This species is common from Tennessee up to the midwest and upstate NY. I'd forgotten that they're found in the Paint Rock and several streams to the west in Lauderdale County, defining the southern edge of their range. It got me thinking about how many darters are in the Paint Rock, including especially the upper tributaries, and I came up with a list of eleven species, ten of which I've seen:
Logperch, Percina caprodes
Blotchside Logperch, P. burtoni
Snail Darter, P. tanasi
Black Snubnose Darter, Etheostoma duryi
Tennessee Snubnose Darter, E. simoterum
Banded Darter, E. zonale
Greenside Darter, E. blenniodes
Blueside Darter, E. jessiae
Johnny Darter, E. nigrum
Fantail Darter, E. flabellare
Stripetail Darter, E. kennicotti

The only one I haven't seen is the famous Snail Darter, which can be found in the lower Paint Rock. This is very high darter diversity for what is a small river system.