Mobility is essential to the fitness of many animals, and the costs of locomotion can dominate daily energy budgets. Locomotor costs are determined by the physiological demands of sustaining mechanical performance, yet performance is poorly understood for most animals in the field, particularly aquatic organisms. We have used 3-D underwater videography to quantify the swimming trajectories and ...

—Concerns over the economic feasibility of commercial aquaculture production of bluegills Lepomis macrochirus have heightened the need for strategies to enhance growth. Recent studies have shown that individually reared bluegill males can grow twice as fast as females; such studies have generated increased interest in development of mostly male or all-male populations. In this study, we develop...

Reservoirs exhibit gradients in conditions and resources along the transition from lotic to lentic habitat that may be important to bluegill ecology. The lotic-lentic gradient can be partitioned into three functional zones: the riverine, transitional, and lacustrine zones. We measured catch frequency and length of bluegills (Lepomis macrochirus) captured along the periphery of these areas (i.e....

Decreasing bag limits is a management mechanism for enhancing size structure of Bluegill Lepomis macrochirus. However, restrictive can promote culling, where an angler returns live fish to the water in exchange another. Little known about effect culling on ice-angled fishes. Our objective was compare effects confinement methods (reference, ice well, and bucket) holding durations (0, 1, 2, or 5 ...

Current US state and federal fish health regulations target the spread of viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus-IVb (VHSV-IVb) through movement restrictions of live fish; however, they largely ignore the potential for the virus to be spread through commercial distribution and use of frozen baitfish from VHSV-IVb-positive regions. Some state laws do require treatment of frozen baitfish to inactivat...

A pattern of dark vertical bands is a characteristic agonistic display in the green sunfish, Lepomis cyanellus and the bluegill, L. macrochirus. The rapidity with which the display can appear and disappear indicates that it is neurally controlled. Electrical stimulation of the brain was carried out in anaesthetized green sunfish and bluegills to map those regions from which this colour change c...

Variability in length-at-age estimates back-calculated from scales continues to be of concem to fishery scientists. Measurement transects used to back-calculate length at age have been recommended; however, specific scale and annuli radius measurements have not been evaluated for variability between different radii. Thus, the purpose of our study was to compare back-calculated length-at-age esl...