Watch your mailboxes. The winter issue of American Currents is an eye-catching, colorful cavalcade of native fish accounts. Topics include:
Herrings in peril
Technological breakthroughs in solo seining
Stippled studfish spawnings
Reproductive behavior of Great Plains fishes
Newly-described species of sculpins and darters (one of which is a crystal darter!)
Plus - Chris Scharpf has graciously and skillfully condensed several unwieldy references on fish zoogeography into a single, elegant account of the mechanisms influencing fish distribution. Read it and you will be an instant expert.
Also - Bob Muller's first-hand report on spawning scaly sand darters is fascinating. It provides an interesting counterpart to recent observations by researchers at the University of Central Arkansas who are working with western sand darters. Both species bury themselves completely in the gravel (without their eyes protruding above the surface of the substrate) and both species apparently do not feed during the spawning season.
And - of course - there is much, much more.
- Jan Hoover
Vicksburg, MS
Edited by fundulus, 28 February 2008 - 09:14 AM.