Tennessee Shiners Spawning

I went out to Estill Fork of the Paint Rock River in north Alabama today with some students to collect scarlet, telescope and striped shiners. We were successful at that, largely because the water has gone down to more normal levels since the rains have slowed down. On our way out, hiking upstream, we noticed a gar ahead of us in surprisingly shallow water; I think it was a spotted? Then several of the students noticed an aggregation of bright orange shiners swimming in a tight ball over some cleared gravel. They were male tennessee shiners, Notropis leuciodus in full breeding color, with a lot of male scarlet shiners in breeding coloration swimming on the outside. I think the gar was after these testosterone-addled fish. We stopped and watched for a while. Every time we approached them they would spin away, so that we couldn't get closer than about 5 feet. I took ten pictures, but only one, below, gives a good view of the tennessees. My camera's not as good as Stan Sung's... Watching it from a medium distance, it was pretty impressive. Females would move into the middle of the swarm and be mobbed for about 30 seconds before they bolted. Tennessee shiners are in the same sub-genus of Notropis as the rainbow shiners I posted a month ago caught in the act in Collinsville, Alabama, so they have the same strong sexual dimorphism.

We've also found some cool gill flukes in fishes out of Estill Fork, but that's the subject of another post once we get the photos fixed up.
 TennShiner03_May29.jpg   67.69KB   0 downloads

Bruce, any indication of who's nest that was previously? Is that a sucker scour from higher water?

Todd

Cool photo Bruce, man I need to get down to Alabama sometime. Since I will be going into my junior year, I have been looking at graduate schools, and Auburn University looks like a decent option for me. I need to go to a place where I can get away from it all on the weekends for a couple of hours and spend time in the field. Anyways, the latter is off topic, cool story and photo!

Blake

Bruce, any indication of who's nest that was previously? Is that a sucker scour from higher water?

Todd

No, there was no clue of what fish, if any, created the scour. Water has been much higher and faster in the last few weeks, but I would guess that it's from some fish's activities. The swirling ball of colored-up males kept coming back to it if we backed off from it.

Very cool, Bruce!

Brian

I found them over river chub and stoneroller nests in the Hiwasee, just not in that brilliant of color.

Given the species in Estill Fork, I'd guess that the "nest" we saw was built by stonerollers. My photograph doesn't do justice to the brilliant orange of the fish that we saw.