Manuscript Fully Accepted At Southeastern Naturalist

It's been too long since I last posted. My immediate spur is hearing from Anne, the editor at Southeastern Naturalist, that the article by Andrew, Brittany and me on gill parasite infection in telescope shiners has been fully accepted, and should come out in print in 3-6 months. I have to thank Don Cloutman for working with me as the guest editor for this paper, improving it hugely. Following is the final Abstract for the article:

Dactylogyrus is a holarctic genus of monogene flatworms that infects the gills of cyprinid fishes. Dactylogyrus species are usually highly host specific, and little is known about their life history in North America. The purpose of this study was twofold: to determine whether Dactylogyrus exhibits seasonality in its life cycle, and if there is any effect upon reproductive effort of the host as a result of Dactylogyrus infection. Over a 12-month period, 967 Dactylogyrus were found on the gills of 383 Notropis telescopus (Telescope Shiner), a cyprinid fish collected in the upper Paint Rock River system in northeastern Alabama. A significant positive relationship was found between host somatic weight and prevalence of infection, and a significant positive correlation between higher intensity of infection and gonadosomatic index (GSI). The assumptions that parasites are evenly distributed among individual host fish and in each month were rejected by chi square tests, with the months of March through July as a peak for the extent of Dactylogyrus infection. These months are the time of gonadal development and reproduction in Telescope Shiners.