Sculpins of Northern Atlantic Slope

Anyone with insight into sculpins of the Atlantic Slope north of the Susquehanna River basin? Are they REALLY mottleds, bandeds, and/or slimy or is that what they are being called for now.

Anyone with insight into sculpins of the Atlantic Slope north of the Susquehanna River basin? Are they REALLY mottleds, bandeds, and/or slimy or is that what they are being called for now.

if you're not including the Susq, yes until you hit the Finger Lakes and northward, WAY no (banded complex is not on the Atlantic Slope -- girardi is not part of this complex), and (for now) yes. why're you asking?

What took so long Dave! I would have PM'ed you but I thought I'd let everyone see the info.

I'm asking because it is becoming my pet peeve that alot of the mussel host work being published uses misnomers of fish. Remember the Schilboides question I had about a year ago? Same sort of thing. How the heck are you supposed to apply such an important piece of management and recovery information if you don't know what fish was REALLY used. Sometimes a pub will just say "these fish were used....", but won't say where they are collected. So you can't figure out on your own the real taxonomy. So some really important host findings for me is being presented soon and all three sculpins were confirmed. I'm assuming they were collected in or near the Delaware River basin since that is where the study population of mussels is located. So they're not really mottled sculpin, they are the northern Atlantic Slope mottled sculpin representative?

Fish collected from the Delaware River, Susquehanna River and
Chesapeake Bay drainages were exposed to glochidia of E. complanata from Pine
Creek, a tributary to the upper Susquehanna River in north central Pennsylvania.
Glochidia successfully transformed into juvenile mussels on five fish species:
American eel (Anguilla rostrata), brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis), lake trout
(Salvelinus namaycush), mottled sculpin (Cottus bairdi), and slimy sculpin (Cottus
cognatus). American eels served as particularly good hosts, yielding high
transformation success values (percent of attached glochidia that transformed
into juvenile mussels) of 82-100% in repeated infestation trials.

This is a part of the abstract. So if the sculpin were from the Chesapeake and Susquehanna drainages they could not have been any of those mentioned, correct? Sculpins from the Delaware would be mottled and slimy, undescribed members of their complexes, etc?

What took so long Dave! I would have PM'ed you but I thought I'd let everyone see the info.

I'm asking because it is becoming my pet peeve that alot of the mussel host work being published uses misnomers of fish. Remember the Schilboides question I had about a year ago? Same sort of thing. How the heck are you supposed to apply such an important piece of management and recovery information if you don't know what fish was REALLY used. Sometimes a pub will just say "these fish were used....", but won't say where they are collected. So you can't figure out on your own the real taxonomy. So some really important host findings for me is being presented soon and all three sculpins were confirmed. I'm assuming they were collected in or near the Delaware River basin since that is where the study population of mussels is located. So they're not really mottled sculpin, they are the northern Atlantic Slope mottled sculpin representative?

I've been sick and at home, with a molasses-slow modem. If they're even talking about banded sculpins, they probably sent the mussels to VA or such and tested against sculpins they could easily get there; who knows what they actually used in the trials!! In the Delaware, the most common sculpins are slimy sculpin (and these appear to be a species distinct from real C. cognatus); (real) mottled sculpin are much less common in the drainage and restricted to the headwaters. Same goes for the Susquehanna; whithout knowing where they got their sculpins they could have had real mottled, slimys, Potomac, Blue Ridge, or checkered (unlikely, highly localized). Real mottleds are only in the northern 1/2 of the drainage, and occur in Pine Creek. Most Susquehanna slimies are the same as the Delaware critter; these also occur in Pine Creek. If they got them from non-Susq Chesapeake drainages (?) they could have had Blue Ridge, Potomac, or checkered.

It's what you get for trusting mussel folks to do fish ID

Edited by daveneely, 31 March 2009 - 11:26 AM.