Collecting - River Bend (McKenzie River, Oregon)

6/19/11 - 6/20-11

Stock Number: 2358.00.0000

Location/Collectors: River Bend, Oregon (McKenzie River), Julian, Kristin A, Mark C, Delaney C

Purpose: To collect and make crosses and mass collection for variation studies.

Field Notes: Sunny, air temp - 18 C. Water temp 12.5 C. Water flow 4990 CFS (high) in Springfield. ~ 200 stickleback collected, 2 sculpin, and 1 redside shiner. 10 crosses were done, 10 separate females 5 crossed to one male and the other 5 with a different male.



Male stickleback with green highlights and black nuptial coloration.



Water level is high, at low levels the tops of these logs are exposed.

Stickleback collecting - Riverbend Oregon, June 2011

Riverbend, Oregon. It was a beautiful day.


The mighty stickleback hunters!





Part of the collection.

Sculpin Fry

They are really small and hard to see but if you look close they are the long pieces of rice that don't act like bubbles but go up and down in the water column.

Tide pool sculpin having lunch

Sculpin eating frozen mysid shrimp. They really go after them!

Sculpin embryos

First clutch of embryos. The yolks are a very beautiful shade of purple. The embryos were removed placed into their own tank within a glass dish. The dish was placed in the flow of water for aeration.

Tidepool sculpin

These tidepool sculpin were collected near Coosbay, Oregon and added to the system on 2/14/11. There appears to be 3 large females and many males. The females were split into two tanks along with the males. We hope to get embryos for juvenile studies.

Old stickleback-oikoplura filter resurrected to grow sculpin

A little plumbing and addition of a pump and this old system is running again. The balls (already in place) in the sump are meant as a baffle to cut down on the salty aerosols.

Guanine-less stickleback

These are normally pigmented siblings of the fish below

Gaunine-less stickleback. This appears to be a random mutant that has shown up in this cross. My guess is that this mutation is recessive and these few fish have "hit the jackpot" and have inherited two recessive alleles for this trait. My plan is to grow these fish out, breed them and try and make a stable line.

Courting female pipefish

This courtship is done early in the morning when the lights first come on. It seems that the best set up is one female with a few males (although we have multiple females in this tank). Give the video a few seconds as they start really courting toward the end. I will try and get pipefish mating video soon.