A Manuscript For My Friends At Freshwater Biology

Yesterday I submitted the manuscript based on Brittany's thesis work to Freshwater Biology. It has the very direct title of, "Invertebrate Drift in Estill Fork, Jackson County, Alabama" with Brittany and me as co-authors in that order. FB has published other studies of stream drift, so hopefully they'll like ours, too.

We've organized the silver shiners (28) and blotched chubs (32?) from last Sunday, starting with basic length/gross weight measurements and giving each individual a name and an attached paper tag with that name. Some of the chubs are obviously this year's young-of-year, and I think three of what we've ID'd as silver shiners are juveniles, too. I hope that we can establish year classes by length bins, examine patterns of gonadal maturation come late winter and spring, and observe gill parasite infection patterns and rates. From what I can tell the silver shiners are especially poorly studied, so I think such a project can make contributions to our knowledge of these species and their ecosystems.