Some interesting bluegill studies

[Scott M]

Read a couple interesting papers for a class I'm taking. I always find scientific papers that are applicable to fishing interesting...I know a few of you also feel this way (particularly InFisherman subscribers since they have regular reviews of scientific studies and papers as they apply to fish management and fishing and some of their writers have fisheries scientist backgrounds). While you can't read the entire lengths of these journal papers (unless you purchase the reading rights or have some other sort of membership login), you can read the abstracts and get the ghist of the study.

The long and the short of one paper was that bluegill are specialized for weeds or open water. Bluegill Phenotypic Variation The paper showed that morphological and behavioral adaptations assist bluegill in predator avoidance and foraging in different habitats. Bluegill cannot be defined as a purely deep or shallow species. This paper shows that they do in fact occupy at least a couple niches or habitat types. This is interesting considering the variety of sunfishes that occupy other niches and have different morphologies.

Another study was done analyzing diets. It seemed to show even more variation in diet, specialization, and water location among bluegill.Japenese Bluegill Study It really seems like this might explain why some fish are caught where they are. Maybe you can only get the large bluegills in a particular lake when you find them roaming open water. Maybe you can only find them hitting the weedlines. They may be suited for one habitat type versus another.

One really classic paper compares alternative male life histories in bluegills. Basically, male bluegill can grow up to be cuckolder fish and balk at the fatherly responsibilities of nest-building and parental care and just run around sneaking into other males nests and spawn with the females. Or they can choose to become a father figure staying close to their nest. The result of cuckolder males can result in more cuckolder fish, driving the average bluegill size down. This paper is a classic and may be a partially driving mechanism into some of Minnesota's stunted bluegill lakes, particularly if anglers are keeping the larger parental males.

I hope you found/find these interesting and maybe have some more...There are some good predator-prey papers out there that involve bluegill. You don't have to study this to find them-google scholar or University search engines can lead you to some interesting reading. Bluegill are interesting to study because they are highly sought after by anglers, yet aren't typically the top predator in systems.