RE: NANFA-L-- Amazon Mollies

Hoover, Jan J ERDC-EL-MS (Jan.J.Hoover-in-erdc.usace.army.mil)
Mon, 7 Feb 2005 12:36:12 -0600

Dave McNeely wrote:
>>>Both species of mollies-in-San Marcos are introduced -- the sailfins from
southern Louisiana, the Amazons from far S. Texas. The Amazon story-in-San
Marcos is an interesting one. They were accidentally released from a
traveling display of live Texas wildlife being taken around the state for
educational purpose by the Texas Game and Fish Commission (now a part of the
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department) that was housed in a trailer-in-the fish
hatchery there. It is unclear when the sailfins were released -- maybe
multiple times.<<<

Dave -

What year did that happen ? Doug Martin wrote a paper on Amazon mollies in
the Nueces River in 1964 for the Texas Journal of Science (which I have not
yet seen) and I was wondering if it was prior to that.

Re sailfin mollies - I posted this once before but it may be of interest -
A 1953 article by William H. Brown (Texas Game and Fish Commission) notes
that sailfin mollies were accidentally stocked in the San Antonio River when
a 1939 flood washed out some fish ponds in which E.E. Shiner was raising
them. Between 1932 and 1940, C.H. Burnstein stocked sailfins in the Comal
River. Mollies were unknown-in-that time from the San Marcos, but in 1944,
mollies were used as bait and released several times in the San Marcos.
Brown notes that numbers of mollies were (in 1952) highest in the San
Antonio, moderate in the Comal, low in the San Marcos, and lowest in the
Guadalupe - and associated the trend with history of stocking and winter
water temperatures.


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