Re: NANFA-- mmmmmmm....

Todd Crail (farmertodd_at_buckeye-express.com)
Fri, 31 Jan 2003 13:00:48 -0500

Very very interesting Patrick :)

Actually, I'll take the conservation note a step further (not a lecture, but
more of a reminder :) and ask that we never reintroduce captive specimens to
open systems anywhere. A farm pond without any outlet is one thing (warn
the owner you there's a miniscule chance that you're going to hose his pond
heh), but an open stream might just give the opportunity for an aquarist to
wipe out one of these species (as we've just established :) with some type
of pathogen. I don't think anyone wants that kind of blood on their hands
when talking to St. Peter at the Pearly Gates ;)

What I'm getting at is... Don't take what you're not planning to keep for
the lifetime of that animal... And if something comes up where you have to
get rid of them, find another home (aquarists, shops, zoos, etc) or
euthenize the specimen. I find that by telling myself "I will have to kill
this animal if I can't care for it any longer" when collecting puts a lot of
fish right back into the water and avoids the whole unpleasantness down the
road :)

With that said... Back to this interesting discussion! :)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Patrick Ceas" <ceas_at_stolaf.edu>

> Believe it or not, all (or almost all) of these new species are also
> diagnosable using good old fashion male breeding color patterns, or
> counting scales & rays. So, it is actually possible to identify
> breeding males in the field. I didn't say that it would be easy, just
> possible! Another nice thing is that most of these new species have non
> overlapping distributions, so if you know what river system you are in,
> you should be able to guess what species is in the net.
>
> And as a conservation side note, remember to return individual fishes
> only to the stream site where you collected them!! Otherwise we really
> do risk the chance of introducing species outside of their range. Since
> some of these newly discovered species have very small ranges, it could
> be disastrous if their streams were accidentally stocked with members of
> a closely related species.
>
> Pat
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