6 replies to this topic

[millionk]

Hi,

 

Last Wednesday I went seining in Clear Creek just outside of Bloomington, IN.  I collected 14 fantail darters, but observed two different morphs: barred (E. f. flabellare) and striped (E. f. lineolatum).  Tom Simon's Indiana fishes field manual has them listed as two subspecies of flabellare, but I can't find out much more about them.  Does anyone know how divergent from one another they really are?  I was hoping to run some experiments soon, but I might have to pick between the two subspecies for the project if I can't pool them together as a single population.

[Matt DeLaVega]

Lost on them too. Still the same species as far as I know. Trautman had them split 40 years ago in Fishes of Ohio. Don't think it was ever accepted. I buy it myself.

[gerald]

You might just be seeing normal variation within a population.  We have 2 "recognized subspecies" of fantail darters in the Atlantic river drainages in the Carolinas (humerale and brevispinum) and I see lots of variation in bars & striped patterns within both of them, even at sites where only one of the two forms is supposed to occur.

[millionk]

Well they don't seem to vary much in gill parasite load, so I guess it will be okay for what I want to do.

[millionk]

Well, Tom Simon weighed in and said that it's unlikely the subspecies would co-occur, so I probably have two color morphs of the same species.  Whew.  That makes things much easier.

[fundulus]

I assume these fantails carry many, many monogenoideans?

[millionk]

You would be correct: 100% prevalence, and high abundance as well.  One individual had 40 of them.