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The Catostomidae Keystone


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#1 Guest_farmertodd_*

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Posted 07 August 2007 - 11:10 AM

Howdy folks,

This might be more of a trip report than a science discussion, but the thing I want to show you all is much more than just a trip.

Once I began to snorkel, I began to really understand fishes and the interspecific (among species) interactions that really make biodiversity happen in our systems. Anyone who's done extensive snorkelling has witnessed the direct link suckers (Catostomidae) make between benthic (bottom) and pelagic (open water) food webs, through their habits of routing through substrate and liberating all sorts of goodies to species unable to do this for themselves.

In the past, I've only seen this with Cyprinids, where whole schools of fish will follow a large sucker, trying to catch scraps of insect larvae the sucker has missed as it chews through the substrate. Knowing this, and that the substrate must be of a reasonable quality for the suckers to capture enough prey items for this to be worth it, it occurred to me how much better the ecosystem and fish community would function in the presence of suckers. This even extends to the benthic community, as the suckers are continually aerating potentially stagnating substrates. Is it the chicken or the egg?

To their demise, suckers are huge migrators, and are repeatedly thwarted by low head dams, subjecting them to patchy spawning habitats where they're competing for space intraspecifically (within a species) during their reproduction and recruitment.

This makes me wonder how many orders of magnitude more biomass we're missing in midsized streams without the historical sucker populations. Well, I don't have to wonder too much, because I've seen enough analogues without dams for long stretches to see how this affects biomass.

All of this is undocumented in science, as far as I know and have researched.

This took a turn in a different direction last night during a dive in the Huron River, Silver Lake SP, Michigan, just north of Ann Arbor and west of the Detroit suburbs.

Right Click, Save As!
http://www.farmertod...n/Hogsucker.wmv (6.5 mb)

That's just a sample of about 10 minutes of video footage of subadult smallmouth "pilotfish" bass following a large hogsucker routing through substrate. I was unable to really capture the interactions between the smallies... The one you see in this footage was vehemently guarding "his" sucker ("Go get your own sucker!" lol) until a MUCH larger smallie came along. What I did capture was where a pack of three were following two hogsucker routing side by side. The dominant subadult was in the middle of the suckers, the other two were evenly spaced out on the flanks.

Many times, suckers are targets for ignorant fisherman who feel they compete with desired species for food, and just outright kill them. Perhaps this will change some minds.

Got a lot of other really cool footage. The water, as you can see, wasn't crystal clear and was stained, but it's about as clear as it get around here. Anyway, got some nice stuff of northern longear sunfish, a quick glimpse of a northern pike, and some quick, but decent footage of a nice sized walleye. Not the typical stuff, I need to spend more time in Michigan with all these predator species to get folks "baited" in to take a closer look at the <ahem> bait ;)

Something else of interest was a follow up to Kate's question awhile back where they weren't catching any fish where zebra mussels were in dense clusters. This was true of our dive. Where zeebs were dense, we didn't see fish. We really didn't see that many fish that would have lived in those habitats, as they tended to be larger substrates rinsed by a cut from an upstream log. The only places we saw greenside darter were in and around woody debris, which I imagine is where they were trying to get chironomid larvae. Maybe they should hire a hogsucker too :)

Todd

#2 Guest_NateTessler13_*

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Posted 07 August 2007 - 08:07 PM

Ah, this is a great thread. I just wish people would be subjected to this that were out in the river more often. Too many times when I walk the banks of the Maumee do I see suckers dead on the shoreline. This is a great place to start this kind of education though. It's got to reach a wider audience. It would be amazing if once when I went out in the river if people were to recognize suckers as something besides a "rough" fish.

#3 Guest_killier_*

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Posted 08 August 2007 - 02:31 PM

yeah I try my best as well I try and save as many longnose gar which are just tossed on the banks as I can but I still miss hindreds of them if only people would figure out that fact that gar prevent stunting and allow for larger bass to grow

#4 Guest_mzokan_*

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Posted 09 August 2007 - 04:41 PM

Thats an interesting idea Todd. It seems plausible that a greater sucker biomass in a river could increase overall biomass through their ecological interactions. It would certainly be difficult to test though with all the confounding variables involved. Especially since overall, a stream fish community is healthier in the absence of dams. The observable increase in fish biomass with sucker biomass could just be a correlation rather than an effect. It would definetly be an interesting idea to look at if you could tease it out. A post-doc project for you maybe??

I knew that some fish follow rooting Hypentelium, does this behavior also occur with Catostomus and Moxostoma? More video please! :D

#5 Guest_farmertodd_*

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Posted 10 August 2007 - 11:04 AM

Hey Marcus, it was a true pleasure getting to hang out with you and Eilene at the conference!

You raise some good point about this as a project, and yeah it'll take a real smart monkey to crack beyond a natural history note.

I think with a slick multivariate analysis (length of stream dam free, QHEI score, IBI score, etc) you could at least begin to tease apart the dependent variables. In Ohio, we have this data, I'd be interested to know what IN, KY, PA and TN have as well. That would probably be a big enough data set to start with :)

I've seen this happen in the wild with Moxostoma and Hypentelium (both nigricans and etowanum) with Cyprinids in tow. This is the first I've seen this happen with 100% confidence with any Centrarchid. However, I had noted before that I would commonly see juvenile smallmouth and hogsucker scatter from the same places up in the shallows, and wondered about it.

I typically don't see Catostomus in the stream orders where I can snorkel. I would need to be out of Ohio to see this, our small tribs are under ever present threat of coliform issues, and I'm not going to put my face in that :)

Todd

#6 Guest_ashtonmj_*

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Posted 10 August 2007 - 11:29 AM

What about all the absent/out of date life history data that is used in IBI formulation? Last time I checked an OEPA manual they were still using Karr 198X, when the manual was first written, and half the sheet had no designations for species. It's so data dependent to make a proper designation and most seem so data defficient.

I really agree with the observation though. Not only did I observe it with hogsuckers and redhorse, but also with other big river fish like drunk, carpsuckers, carp...I think that snorkeling itself tends to mimic that behaviour by a catostomid too. I would have a trail of cyprinella, small gamefish, and darters anytime I snorkeled and particles were kicked up.

Since I think about it and I already downloaded one picture from last years research, I might as well keep milking that CD for examples. These pictures were taken while snorkeling upstream, into a pretty swift current (0.4-0.7 m/s), and were taken by turning around occassionally and snapping the pictures or doing a quick 180 spin and face the fish head on.

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#7 Guest_farmertodd_*

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Posted 10 August 2007 - 12:02 PM

That's why I would want to see what other states have in data. Ohio has their IBI together because Chris Yoder and Ed Rankin are such an influence on what data is collected (be nice if there ever was an anaylsis to come from it BESIDES IBI though!). But it might not be so elsewhere. Additionally, there is some bias in the data toward catching large fish such as suckers and carp vs small benthic fishes like darters, however relative it is, and I'm definately NOT sold on the IBI as a measurement of stream health, esp from an E-boat on a big river. But that's the motivation in putting in the other dependent variables, and not just the short list I typed. This really is the strength of using a multivariate analysis.

Yep, you make a point that I meant to make... You turn into the "big sucker" when snorkelling :) I've shot my best footage by looking downstream. Foks, when you are snorkelling, turn around. You won't believe what's going on behind you. I'm working on different techniques for riding downstream, you see a lot more. But it's tough to do with a big honkin camera in hand, esp where there's a coat of spent algae on the surface of the substrate that you don't want to stir up. Worked really well in low productivity areas of the Conasauga though! Casper couldn't figure out what the heck I was doing. That ain't how you snokel, boy! :)

Todd

#8 Guest_mzokan_*

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Posted 12 August 2007 - 02:43 PM

Hey Marcus, it was a true pleasure getting to hang out with you and Eilene at the conference!


Likewise Todd! If you are ever collecting down in South Carolina or Georgia, give us a call, I'm sure our paths will cross again some time.

#9 Guest_scottefontay_*

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Posted 13 August 2007 - 11:18 AM

I see the same thing when I'm mowing the lawn, sparrows and robins catching the insects that flee. I always find it amazing how quickly the crows and seagulls come to earthwork construction projects to root around for worms and such in the disturbed soils.



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