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A Comparative Life History Study of the Swamp Darter, Etheostoma Fusiforme (Girard)

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A Comparative Life History Study of the Swamp Darter, Etheostoma Fusiforme (Girard) NORTH VERSUS SOUTH: A COMPARATIVE LIFE HISTORY STUDY OF THE SWAMP DARTER, ETHEOSTOMA FUSIFORME (GIRARD) By ADANIA FLEMMING A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2018 © 2018 Adania Flemming To my husband Jason Fraser-Nash for his support and assistance, and to my family from Trinidad and Tobago my dad, David Flemming, mom, Audrey Greenidge and sisters Adonia and Adenia Flemming for their support and to my advisor Larry Page for his guidance. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Gratitude must be expressed to Jason Fraser-Nash, William Fraser-Nash, Hannah Owen, and Cathleen Bester for their assistance in collecting specimens, to Danielle Diaz for her assistance in sorting and identifying invertebrates, to Kevin Love for his guidance with learning R programming and technical support, to Zachary Randall, Jarred Randall, and Gustav Paulay for their assistance with photographing specimens, to Kirsten Work for E. f. barratti reproduction video footage, to Ash Bullard for identification of the digenean parasite, to my advisor Larry Page, and committee members Daryl Parkyn, Max Nickerson and Jimmy Liao for their guidance, to my lab mates John Pfeifer, David Boyd, Randy Singer, Rob Robins and collection mates Lindsay French, Samara Nehemia for their support. Distributional data for E. fusiforme were downloaded from iDigBio, supported by NSF EF 1115210 and DBI 1547229. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................4 LIST OF TABLES ...........................................................................................................................7 LIST OF FIGURES .........................................................................................................................8 ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................................9 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................10 2 METHODS .............................................................................................................................14 Field Site Description .............................................................................................................14 Field Collection ......................................................................................................................14 Laboratory ...............................................................................................................................15 Diet ..................................................................................................................................16 Reproduction ...................................................................................................................16 Development and Growth ................................................................................................17 Aquarium Observations ...................................................................................................17 Statistics ...........................................................................................................................18 3 FIELD SITE DESCRIPTION (HABITAT ECOLOGY) .......................................................22 4 RESULTS/DISCUSSION ......................................................................................................25 Reproduction ...........................................................................................................................25 Reproductive Cycle of the Male ......................................................................................25 Reproductive Cycle of the Female ..................................................................................26 Spawning ................................................................................................................................27 Development and Growth .......................................................................................................28 Demography ...........................................................................................................................31 Territoriality ....................................................................................................................31 Composition ....................................................................................................................31 Diet and Feeding Habits or Diet and Parasitism .....................................................................31 Interactions with Other Organisms .........................................................................................33 Predation ..........................................................................................................................33 Parasitism ........................................................................................................................33 Conservation ....................................................................................................................34 Aquarium Observations ...................................................................................................34 5 SUMMARY ............................................................................................................................42 5 LIST OF REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................44 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .........................................................................................................46 6 LIST OF TABLES Table page 4-1 Mean lengths, weights and ova counts of female Etheostoma. f. barratti collected each month during the reproductive period. ......................................................................35 4-2 Lengths and dates of the 20 largest specimens collected at Hatchet Creek. ......................36 4-3 Mean Number of Food Organisms Per Stomach. ..............................................................37 5-1 Summary of life-history information on the Hatchet Creek population of E. f. barratti compared to a southern New England population of E. f. fusiforme (Schmidt and Whitworth 1979, Schmidt 1983). ................................................................................43 7 LIST OF FIGURES Figure page 1-1 Distributional data of the Swamp Darter, Etheostoma fusiforme. .....................................13 2-1 Standard lengths of all specimens collected over the study period. .................................21 3-1 Image of Hatchet Creek, taken on 11th December 2015. ..................................................19 3-2 Field site showing the location of Hatchet Creek. ............................................................20 3-3 Hatchet Creek before 15th February 2017 and after the level of water in the creek rose to the floodplain 23rd July 2017. The red boxes outline the limb of a tree at the top of the floodplain showing the change in the water level. ............................................24 4-1 Variation in temperature and mean GSI values of females and males. .............................38 4-2 Etheostoma f. barratti adult male, 46.0-mm-SL (top) and female, 44.0-mm-SL (bottom). Reproductive color is visible in the black bands in the dorsal fin and more pronounced dark pattern on the body of the male. .............................................................39 4-3 The smallest specimen examined from the study areas, a 13.1-mm-SL juvenile of undetermined sex collected on 14th April 2017. ................................................................39 4-4 Diet by size class of E. f. barratti. Numbers in parentheses indicate number of darters in each size class. Percentages <2% are not shown. Insecta refers to taxa other than those found in taxa identified............................................................................40 4-5 Seasonal diet of E. f. barratti. ............................................................................................41 8 Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science NORTH VERSUS SOUTH: A COMPARATIVE LIFE HISTORY STUDY OF THE SWAMP DARTER, ETHEOSTOMA FUSIFORME (GIRARD) By Adania Flemming May 2018 Chair: Lawrence Page Major: Zoology The life histories of subspecies of fishes differ from one another as a result of several factors including the differences in the environment associated with their geographic ranges. The life history for the Swamp Darter, Etheostoma fusiforme is well documented for the northern subspecies, but little information exists for the southern subspecies despite the opportunity for differentiation. Over a period of 18 months at Hatchet Creek in the Suwannee River drainage of Florida, an ecological and behavioral study of the Swamp Darter revealed differences between the northern and southern populations with respect to life history characteristics. In the southern population, the Swamp Darter can live for at least fifteen months, spawns from January to April, and consumes a variety of invertebrates not found in the diet of the northern population. By better characterizing the differences in life history between the northern and southern
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