Do you typically find more abnormalities such as swimbladder dysfunction in sunfish hybrids? If so, that would obviously have a strong effect on hybrid fitness.
Generally speaking, we do not see more disfunction in F1 hybrids although F2's and greater tend to be a real mess. Exceptions are with a particular population of coppernose bluegill crossed with any nothern bluegill, regardless of direction and crosses involving warmouth.
The (coppernose x norhtern bluegill) consistently have an upturned caudal-peduncle. Otherwise they grow very well and we will attampt to breed the charactersistic out if the lineages survive future rounds of brood stock selection.
I think warmouth should be in a separate genus. Some crosses involving warmouth are just about inviable and some of those that are viable might just be natural triploids. When we make triploid versions of those same nearly inviable hybrids, viability jumps way up, which is the opposite of most triploids owing to the extreme nature of the triploid induction process.
I think the longear occuring in the North Fork White River in south central Missouri are of hybrid origin involving redbreast sunfish. Some look quite a bit like redbreast and ear tabs are not only all over the place in terms of appearance but tend to be highly assymetrical on a given individual.
The swim bladder problem with longear x western dollar I think has more to due with water quality. We are running them as batches in static 10-gal aquariums and they are not getting priority care. We are doing this more for fun than anything else. Would take replication, broods and tanks, to get handle on whether hybridzation cause or not.
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