I went on a short trip to KY at the begining of this week for work. We were looking for longhead darters for a captive breeding program and we went to 4 sites and then one bonus stop for fun on the way back to Ohio.

Site # 1 Green River main stem...

Central Stoneroller
Striped shiner
Tennessee Shiner
Bluntnose minnow
N. Hog Sucker
Elegant Madtom
Green Sunfish
Banded Darter
Greenside Darter
Orangefin Darter
Fantale Darter
Rainbow Darter
Bluegrass Darter
Logperch Darter


Site #2 Upper Russel Creek

Chesnut Lamprey? Still examining these to be sure but I think this is what they are.
Largescale Stoneroller may have been centrals as well but we found some large males with definite largescale characters
Striped Shiner
Tennessee Shiner
Spotfin Shiner
Scarlet Shiner
Bluntnose Minnow
Streamline Chub
N. Hog Sucker
Black Redhorse
C. Longear Sunfish
Smallmouth Bass
Banded Darter
Greenside Darter
Orangefin Darter
Rainbow Darter
Bluegrass Darter
Kentucky Snubnose Darter
Logperch Darter
Frecklebelly Darter
1 Longhead Darter

The next morning we tried lower Russel Creek as site # 3

Chesnut Lamprey
Largescale Stoneroller again could have been centrals as well we didn't look at all of them we caught that closely
Striped Shiner
Tennessee Shiner
Bluntnose Minnow
Streamline Chub
Bigeye Chub
Roseyface Shiner
Emerald Shiner
N. Hogsucker
Golden Redhorse
Brindled Madtom
Elegant Madtom
Brook Silverside
N. Studfish
Rock Bass
C. Longear Sunfish
Bluegill Sunfish
Fantail Darter
Spotted Darter
Tippecanoe Darter
Greenside Darter
Banded Darter
Rainbow Darter
Orangefin Darter
Bluegrass Darter
Gilt Darter
Logperch Darter
25 Longhead Darter
Banded Sculpin
N. Hog Sucker


We then tried one more site in the Green River drainage which was on the Little Barren River...

Stoneroller sp Didn't look at them close at all here
Roseyface Shiner
Streamline Chub
Bigeye Chub
Bluntnose Minnow
Fathead Minnow
Striped Shiner
Redhorse sp. Didn't look close enough but probable black or golden
N. Hog Sucker
Elegant Madtom
N. Studfish
Orangefin Darter
Greenside Darter
Banded Darter
Bluegrass Darter
Rainbow Darter
Spotted Darter
Logperch Darter
Banded Sculpin

We decided to head back rather than risk keeping the Longheads we had captured alive for another day and stopped at one more site in the upper Cumberland drainage just for fun...

Buck Creek

Central Stoneroller
Bigeye Chub
Whitetail Shiner
Scarlet Shiner
Telescope Shiner
Bluntnose Minnow
N. Hog Sucker
Black Redhorse
Bluebreast Darter
Bloodfin Darter
Greenside Darter
Rainbow Darter
Banded sculpin

Unfortunately we forgot to take a camera along on this trip but we did take some vouchers in formalin from this last site so they still had some nice color when we got back.


Male Bluebreast Darter (Etheostoma camurum)


Male Bloodfin Darter (Etheostoma sanguifluum)


Banded Sculpin (Cottus carolinae)

I also brought back a few live fish for my personal tanks and I will try to add a few pictures of those in the near future.

Brian:

I'm down near Lexington, and particularly interested in finding non parasitic lampreys and brook stickleback. Seen either of these in trips to KY? The bluebreasts are interesting, I've never seen them.

Also, if you get down into KY again, I'd love to come join you. If you need any banded sculpin, I have a creek full of the darn things. That's mostly what I've been finding lately.

--John

No bellum pictures?!? So the Notho collection is bellum, tippecanoe and maculatum.

Bluegrass darter, huh. Another stigmaeum, I see.

Probably some good candidate sites for my project, hitting the Green, Kentucky and Cumberland on that latitude transect. What were abundances of the darter species like? What were the abundances of madtoms and sculpins like?

Todd

P.S. I'll get back to you and Justin on Sunday. Ran everything down to the wire this week. Sorry for the dead air.

Bellum where absolutely everywhere so don't worry there are two in my stream tank, hopefully I'll get around to a picture some time today. We only took a formalin collection from that last site, everything else was in 95 so pictures woudn't be worth much. Abundances were prety good especially Russel creek and the Little Barren, both very nice streams. The little Barren had E. maculatum all over the place at the site we were at. As far as Nothonotus there are suposed to be camurum as well in the drainage but we only saw them in Buck creek (which had great abundances but not as many species) wich is a completely different drainage, and I was quite surprised to not see ruffilineatum there. I know from a past trip they are in the next trib to the west that is significantly smaller but we didn't see a one. Maybe the abundance of giant camurum and sanguifluum (were talking Kokosing River sized Darters and plenty of them) chased them all up stream to where Buck is of similar size to other ruffilineatum sites... That was my thought of an explanation anyways.

Brian:

I'm down near Lexington, and particularly interested in finding non parasitic lampreys and brook stickleback. Seen either of these in trips to KY? The bluebreasts are interesting, I've never seen them.

Also, if you get down into KY again, I'd love to come join you. If you need any banded sculpin, I have a creek full of the darn things. That's mostly what I've been finding lately.

--John

We did not find any non-parasitic lampreys and this is only my second KY trip so I can't say too much about directing you to locations. As far as sticklebacks if you ever decide to make a trip up to Ohio let me know and I can easily help you out here. The Bluebreast darters were very bundant at that site and I'm sure there are others in KY as well where you could probably find some and they do very well in aquariums.

The absence of rufilineatum is zoogeographic. They get real patchy the further up the Cumberland you go. I was surprised about this too. They're not even found in the Big South Fork! It has something to do with the bloodfins. Might be another good project in my darter community theory fiesta.

Todd

Todd I had a big reply a day ago, somehow froze up on me and wouldn't post, but you basically said it in a few short sentances. Where there are really large, endemic maculatum members do you notice you typically don't see many other Nothos? Maculatum in Ohio typically have 2 others, aquali and vulneratum for the most part, but microlepidum, sangiufluum, and wapitii typically do not (correct?). Can't say anything about the other SE species or if this is even applicable. The Stones and Collins come to mind specifically as well as BSF. Alot of other places, like where there are vulneratum you have 3 sometimes 4 total members. Others might be found in the drainages but it seems like not in that tight community. It would be interesting to tease out how much is zoogeographic related versus community related. Chicken or the egg situation to some extent...?

This is probably too much and off topic, but hey I can't get enough Nothonotus and I like to share so...
Are there really N. camurus in the Green River, KY? I was under the impression that N. bellus replaces them; from everything I've seen the N. camurus records from that drainage are from before the description of N. bellus or mis-identification because someone didn't know about the description (or what drainage they were in).
I've never collected N. rufilineatus with N. sanguifluus, although certain streams (Obey, Wolf, Roaring, Otter) have records of N. sanguifluus from the 1940's and 1960's (correct IDs), but never had N. rufilineatus from those sampling events, and now (from the 90's on) only N. rufilineatus are collected from these streams and N. sanguifluus is apparently extirpated. As smbass said the redlines make it to Pitman Creek and my money is on N. rufilineatus being a relatively recent invader of the Cumberland River. On Todd's line of thought, N. sanguifluus are the one egg gaurding Nothonotus that can be found frequently in the main riffle as opposed to the glide before a riffle or in a deep fast cataract like the other egg guarders.
There are quite a few places to get 4 species of Nothonotus and these usually include: 1 egg guarder, 1 small (N. denoncourti or N. tippecanoe), and two regular sized egg buriers, often N. rufilineatus and/or N. camurus. They divy up the habitat fairly noticebly, but some will switch depending on the other Nothonotus present. Other than the Caney Fork, N. sanguifluus are often found with N. camurus and N. tippecanoe, although the N. camurus in these streams tends to like smaller riffles. While N. microlepidus (the only other egg guarder Nothonotus in the Cumberland River) are often found with N. rufilineatus, and N. camurus (which is extirpated from the Stones) or N. tippecanoe. The Caney Fork River is odd (lots of endemics) and only a N. sanguifluus type thing is there now. There is one creek above the falls that HAD an N. camurus type thing at one time, but a gov. agency thought it'd be better as a pike fishery and 'removed the trash fish' by chemical means. We are making at least one more trip to look for it, but if it's there it doesn't have much stream to call home.
Then there are those 'corn-fed' Ohio N. camurus that probably outcompete Micropterus.. no, no... feed on Micropterus as adults. Perhaps all other darters are relatively so small that they don't compete at all? Have a good one, Ben
'

Ben, I agree that E. sanguifluum(s) might be extirpated from the Roaring River. I remeber reading a thesis from the late 80's, maybe a little more recently, about the fish community of Blackburn Fork and there were one or two sanguifluum collected. It'd be in the TN Tech library and Biology department. The middle reaches of Blackburn Fork has so much pasture, cows, and six strand barbed fence, but fish everywhere. The road that follows it is awesome but it was extremely hard to get permission alot of places I wanted to check out. I did always find it interesting that the rufinlineatum were really heavy in the Roaring, lower Blackburn Fork, but weren't up Spring Creek, or in the Roaring upstream of Spring Creek. I never got into the Obey either but that lower part of the East FOrk and the Wolf seem to be understudied to me when there are definately relict istolated populations of fish and mussels. Where are camurum and microlepdium still found together, the Red River?

That is one hell of a musky fishery though. There are tons of 36-48"+ fish and none of this 1,000 cast b.s. either.

They were getting camurum in Buck Creek with is Cumberland. I had to examine that closely too

But yeah Ben, you totally have the same observation that I have on what will constitute the maximum richness Nothonotus community at any point. And radiations among the egg buriers seems correlated with velocity of discharge, that's the partition.

I'm going to work on Ohio first, but I dont' see why the model wouldn't work if people were willing to spend the time to collect microhabitat data that it wouldn't work everywhere. I can't stand turning a good snorkel into work (or math for that matter) but I guess that's my job now

I agree with the observations about rufilineatum as well. As I think about it, I think that species seriously enjoyed the Xeric Period at 12-9k BPE, since it could tolerate smaller stream segments, and thus had more metapopulations distributed across the landscape while other Nothos went locally extirpated in drought. That would be one hypothesis to start with. Might explain the patchy distribution in the Cumberland.

Awww crap, now I have another project idea. While it would have ruled, I'm sorta glad Matt didnt' end up at UT. We would have thought up 10,000 of the Best Projects Ever ™ and never completed a single one lol

Good discussion guys, I do seriously enjoy having them

Speaking of those corn fed darters... I don't think I ever put any of those pictures up.



Todd

That part of the Cumberland Plateau is pretty interested, and not just for fish, some of the botanizers at UT would get all excited about relict populations around there. It will be interesting to look at the distributions of N. rufilineatus and N. sanguifluus through time... but like Matt said that may be difficult because of the lack of frequent sampling. The last time I put a seine in Blackburn Fork it came up with 30+ bulging fat N. rufilineatus, very pretty around there, but hard to get to. I hope to be getting into a few of those tribs a little more this summer. I'm not saying anything about the previous identifications of N. sanguifluus from the Obey, Wolf, Roaring, and Otter, but the yearling male N. rufilineatus I collected last fall had odd color patterns for juvenile N. rufilineatus, very similar to juvenile N. sanguifluus with red submarginal bands in the caudal that didn't connect and actually faded before reaching the point that they started to curve towards each other. A couple other characters were shared, but in the lab (color and dna) they were good Cumberland N. rufilineatus. We're going through the Cumberland tribs for N. sanguifluus and N. microlepidus in breeding dress, hopefully I can get a better idea of the distributions of some of those. N. microlepidus and N. camurus are fairly common around Adams on the Red R., N. camurus less so, but not much less than the N. rufilineatus there. Todd's ideas are great, just makes me wish I also had a big ole dataset better suited for population studies. Even better, I should just take the next 30 yrs to snorkel all N. rufilineatus streams once a year, that grant will fly!?! Ben

Edited by bpkeck, 06 April 2008 - 05:20 PM.

Todd,

Out of 10,000 you would have thought we could have gotten 500 done right? That's a paltry 5%; we'd be good for at least that. Man it's a tough itch to get rid of ...

The redlines in the Roaring sure don't mind the fact that stream turns to standing pools or goes underground for large stretches every year.

Ben,

I think the sampling frequency in that area is hampered alot by recording. Blackburn Fork, Spring Creek, and that stretch of Roaring River is heavily sampled because it's so close to TTU. If there is a such thing as a home stream that would be it. The problem is it's typically for a class demos of electrofishing or to collect host fish for mussels. I can't even remeber the number of times I sampled in those three streams. I took two trips to specifically look for sanguifluus with no luck. The problem is either no records are kept or the records are lost in obscurity to permit reports and varying levels of identification error. I wonder how many Green River, Buck, Horselick, and Pittman Creek fish collections for mussel host work have been pushed into a cloudy pile up of paper because of this.


Why hasn't anyone asked what a "Fantale darter" is? Just messing around Brian, great trip report, never did fish work there just digging and the lucky madtom that would plop out of some shells.

A few more pics, and for you Nothonotus experts are there any differences between a female maculatum and sanguifluum?


Etheostoma bellum Male Orangefin Darter


Etheostoma sanguifluum Male Bloodfin Darter


Etheostoma sanguifluum Female Bloodfin Darter


Etheostoma cf. stigmaeum Male Bluegrass Darter

That's a good question for Tom or Ben.

If you mixed them in the cooler, I don't know that you're going to be able to figure it out without fixing them, and that, I assume, defeats the purpose?

Great pics. I'm anxious to see bellum in the flesh

Todd

Edited by farmertodd, 09 April 2008 - 08:11 AM.

Nope didn't mix them, I was careful of that for that exact reason of not being able to distinguish females, I only brought back the singal pair of the sanguifluum anyways and it looks like the female actually has been picking on the male. She is bigger and they are in a 20 gallon tank all alone.

Ain't that just the way it is...

All the females in that little clade, N. maculatus/N. sanguifluus/N. microlepidus, are pretty similar and I'd say meristics would be the best way to ID them. But then I haven't done a lot of life color comparisons of the females. In preserved specimens the pigmentation is nearly identical.