Issue 6

Catfish, Crayfish, and Mussels

by Zoë Hoyle and Jim Cleveland

It’s May in Oxford, Mississippi, still cool, not muggy yet. It’s time to haul out the waders and get the electric current going.

The fine-lined pocketbook mussel has developed special structures to attract the sunfish its specialized larvae, called glochidia, depend on for the intermediate stage of their development. (photo by Wendell Haag)

Outside their building near the University of Mississippi campus, SRS Ecology of Aquatic and Terrestrial Fauna Team leader Mel Warren and fellow fisheries research biologists Susan Adams and Wendell Haag haul out nets, boots, and chest-high waders. Meanwhile, technicians Gordon McWhirter and Amy Commens hook an electrofishing boat—a squarish metal craft rigged up to stun fish with an electric current—behind the team’s pickup truck and make sure the electricity is flowing.

The boat is just one of many tools the team uses to research warmwater fish, freshwater mussels, and crayfish in the forested wetlands of the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley (LMAV). Part of the SRS Center for Bottomland Hardwoods Research located at Stoneville, MS, the members of the Oxford team work together to understand the aquatic ecosystems of the Southeast, and have contributed to a new understanding of the diversity and imperiled status of aquatic species in the region.(...continued...)