Iowa Darters in Ohio

I did some collecting in northcentral Ohio over Thanksgiving. Mostly Mohican River drainage. In a word, burr.

I was checking out a couple historical localities for the Iowa darter, Etheostoma exile. I was using some very old records, and struck out. This species is now of conservation concern in the state. Has anyone ran across this species in the not-too-distant past? Any information will be helpful, as there may be some conservation plans in the works.

Thanks

Mike

To be clear; This is somewhat sensitive information, so please do not post localities on the forum. Personal message is preferred.

Thanks
Mike

Hi Mike,

Brian Zimmerman has all the localities, so you might check with him in a PM. Their distribution warrants more than SSC in my opinion, I'm not sure why the decision was made to downgrade their listing. They're extrordinarily fragmented and the best population is the most isolated.
Would make a nice project, if you were looking for something "back home" There's some phylogeography I think that's been overlooked, they'd be a good species to test it.

Todd

Todd, that's an interesting observation you made about the best population of Iowa's being the most isolated. I've seen the same kind of pattern for both flame chubs and stippled studfish in Alabama. In all cases it represents artefacts of human land uses over the last 200 years, I'd guess.

Land use might be the final nail in the coffin... But the nature of the distribution in the Great Miami River (perhaps even the other glaciated populations) joined with, say, redside dace, may suggest dual refugia, thus, different lineages all together than their more evenly distributed counterparts in, say, Michigan. Proglacial lake position does not adequately explain their presence in the GMR for example (Glacial Lake Tight, however...), nor is there an abundance of habitats appropriate for their life history. So, the GMR populations may not even be the same as those found in the Portage Lakes, if those fish found their way southward through the same connection which redside moved north and west. And thus, the distribution was hugely fragmented to start with.

There's real work to do here in Ohio, if it hadn't been covered with exile work already.

And it's gonna be fun, because the person to work on it is going to have to get DNA out of formalinized tissues from a small bodied animal of which there are relatively few specimens

Todd

Any of your remaining populations near gamefish farms? I have seen many shipments of fathead minnows out of Iowa with sticklebacks and Iowa darters in mix. The majority of minnows were intended for use as forage in either advanced fingerling bass or walleye production ponds.

That is definately another possibility for the GMR population, as it is such an outlier, and there were/are fish/trout farms all over that area.

Todd

Edited by farmertodd, 04 December 2008 - 02:11 PM.

The GMR population I think your referring too Todd is actually one of a spattering of many small populations in tiny little remnant glacial ponds. It actually extends over to the headwaters of some west side Scioto tribs as well. There is probably 10 maybe even 15 or more little remnant populations in the GMR drainage in western Ohio. I would find it hard to beleive that they were introduced via bait shipments because they appear to have been in every natural lake in Ohio at one time and these really small little glacial pot holes are no exception and because they are in a less populated portion of the state it appears they have survived better than some of the populations that were undoubtedly much larger in some of the larger glacial lakes in NE and extreme NW part of the state. There are (or at least were in the mid 80's, no one has been looking sicne then) still populations in the NE part of the state, and I suspect there are some still in the NW as well just not in that one bigger lake anymore but in a couple of very small ones near by. I don't think you would have to use old preserved specimens for most portions of the state, the one exception is likely the populations to the east of Columbus, I am rather confident those are truely gone. I don't think I'm giving anything away when I say Buckeye lake is no place for an Iowa darter any more and I know for a fact one of the smaller lakes in that area is gone because now the hatchery I work at is in it's place. Makes me upset every time I think about it. The Hebron hatchery was a US hatchery before it became state owned and was built on a wetland/small pothole lake that had both Iowa darters and Lake Chubsuckers. Took me the longest time to figure out where De Wiess's Pond was, I had this old record that I just could not find a location for. Then I got my current jub and was using google maps to look up how to go to work and sure enough there was a historical marker right on the hatchery called De Wiess's Pond...

Mike I'd be more than happy to help you out and likely can do more than just give you locations, this fish is one I am personally very interested in and would be glad to help confirm some more locations for presently existing populations.

The store I work for gets bait minnows from a supplier who sources them from Missouri. These are just the flatheads, mind you. Every other shipment contains at least a few Iowa darters, often very nice looking males. I believe nearly every aquarium owned by a store associate now has a few in it! I collected a few in the spring here, but have added twice that number(and often, larger specimens) by simply looking in the bait tank every Thursday to see what new has come in.
Got what looked like an orangespot sunfish a few weeks ago also, but sadly it was in such poor shape that it did not survive the quarantine:(

I didn't realize the population extended over into the Scioto. Even more interesting. Thanks for typing that all up Brian.

Todd

So some of those glacial pot hole lakes in Portage and Geauga County? I think I even remeber reading somewhere on the net that a population existed somewhere in the NE in a small pot hole fen waterbody.

Brian has checked some of those places out a few time, but as I remember, came up fruitless, which is probably related to the habitat when he had time to look at it. I've found right after ice-out is the best time to really find them, because 1) they're spawning and 2) there aren't plants in the danged way. It might be that we need to do an exile blitz this spring He and I talked about it some before. I'll just shut up now, since he's really the one who has the handle on the situation.


Todd

Edited by farmertodd, 05 December 2008 - 11:28 AM.

We had some incidentally high catch rates of swamp darters in ponar grabs in heavily vegetated lakes out here two summers ago. Seining in some of those ponds and others this year was somewhat less effective because of the copious amounts of veg messing up the haul.

So I looked at the data a little more today and it appears my memory was a little fuzzy on the headwaters of those Scioto tribs, those little lakes only had lake chubsuckers found but just because the Iowa's were not found does not mean they were never there. The fact that there were indeed lake chubsuckers lends to it being a valid assumption that some of those locations likely had iowa darters at one time as well, and who knows may still have them. There was a guy who worked for the ODNR who apparently took interest in species found in these remnant lakes and or other wetland type habitats during the 80's and got way more complete coverage of these habitats than Trautman ever did. There are close to 20 sites in NE Ohio and exactly 10 in the GMR drainage (I counted those) that were vouchered records for the 80's after the last fishes of Ohio. He also turned up the last known records of both the blacknose and blackchin shiners for the state. The blackchin shiner was found in the city of Canton of all places. If they could survive there till the early 80's I wouldn't be too surprised if they were still around there now or some where else in the state.

Susan found a way into Nettle Lake, so I think it'll be in order for checking this spring. It's always had the right stuff for this community (including proximity to the other St. Joe lakes). I've just always ended up at the boat ramp when there's been plants galore. There's no real surprises there tho. I think these kettles in the GMR drainage are far more fascinating.

Todd

I agree that the kettle or "pot hole" lake populations are very likely native. The great thing is, they are quite often fed by the underlying aquifer, rather than surface drainage. This means that they have great potential as reintroduction sites. The small scale processes that may have caused extirpation of Iowa darters (i.e. raw sewage discharge, denuded riparian...) may have been corrected by now. Some of the kettle lakes I've been to looked like they had great potential. Of course, no introductions should be planned before we get a handle on the genetics, as suggested above. I appreciate the comments folks. Let's keep in touch regarding an "exile blitz".

I think the genetics of these guys has already been looked at but I'm drawing a blank on who it was that did the work. I do not think it is published, I learned it through personal communication with this person and If I could remember who it was I could send you in his directions. He did include Ohio specimens from the GMR drainage. I would never claim to understand genetics but he explained that he found no significant difference between fish from across their range. I don't know how extensive the sampling was though.

Edit: Checked my contacts and I'm pretty sure it was Nick Lang. So you may want to ask him about this because I don't know the details.

I'm game for an "Exile-ent" Adventure. har har