RE: NANFA-- Topeka shiner decline and FW jelly expansion

Hoover, Jan J ERDC-EL-MS (HOOVERJ_at_wes.army.mil)
Fri, 7 Jun 2002 19:07:10 -0500

Mark wrote:
>>>Thanks for the information on the Topeka Shiner. This is very
interesting
and it makes sense to me. A few years back I almost left the computer world
and was going to go to graduate school for fisheries at the University of
Minnesota under Jay Hatch. The project I was going to work on was the
Topeka Shiner in southwest Minnesota Over several weeks we did a bunch of
collecting in the area and found them to be locally abundant. What really
struck me was that the habitat was often far from pristine where we would
find bucket loads of the fish. There was one farm pond where they were the
most abundant species....The contention that the main problem the Topeka
Shiner has is with
introduced species strikes a cord with my limited observations. Thanks for
the info.<<<

Jan writes:

Separating abiotic from biotic causes is always tough. Agriculturally
impacted landscapes often have introduced populations of centrarchids, so
distinguishing effects of degraded habitat from predation is not easy.
Matthew Winston's study, however, is the first one I've seen that uses such
an extensive database (three statewide surveys during the periods 1938-1948,
1960-1968, and 1992 to 1998) and a rigorous screening technique to make all
survey data comparable.

By the way, Jay Hatch maintains an online Topeka shiner bibliography:
http://www.gen.umn.edu/faculty_staff/hatch/topeka/biblio.html

Recently, I have been thinking about my own Topeka shiners which are
retirees from some lab work we did - in summer 1998. Assuming they were
only 1 year old when we got them, the fish are now 5 years old. They are
believed to live only three years in nature.
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