A comparison of a naturally occurring, BG x RES hybrid, and a RES.

Hybrid on top @ 9", RES on bottom @ 10"

How rewarding that must be, out of your own pond!

Congrats on some great looking fish, Tony!

F Hybrid M on bottom is what I'd say.

Tony, any idea how many RES were stocked per acre?

Nice.

I put ten 5" BG and 125 3" RES in my <1 acre refurbished pond this last summer/fall. Kind of hoping I get some hybrids just for the novelty of it.

Scott,

Why do you think the bottom one is a hybrid?

Ironically that is not what I want when I add male redears to my male bluegill pond. If I screw up and any females...

Different strokes for different folks.

Cecil, I don't. Lemee rephrase that. Top hybrid fish I think is a female, bottom non-hybrid fish I think is a male.

Hey Cecil, three years ago I could not have told you the difference between a RES and a BG, I'm not even close to being able to properly sex them.

I would like to be able to do that in the next couple years though. Visions of a forage pond in my brain to raise some FHM and RES, and I got this ravine between my new pond and the refurbished pond, just the right watershed, that is just begging for.....................

Tony, beautiful fish as always!

snrub, forage ponds are just too much fun. I've learned a lot by having a pond that I could dedicate to one species, and focus on a specific goal.

O.K. Just didn't read that way?

Scott, there's no way to know. There hasn't been a native BG or RES stocked into these ponds for at last 30 years. (The time frame that I have been involved with the property).

Possibly even several years before that.

Beautiful fish, Tony!!

Notice the spot at the rear base of the soft dorsal fin of the hybrid. Just a little lighter than in a pure BG which tend to have a darker spot there. Only BG and GSF have this spot and apparently a BGxRES hybrid does as well.

I am not sure both aren't crosses/hybrids. Look at the pectoral fins - they don't look RES to me. Can't see gill rakers. Other fins on both look RES however. All remaining morphological features are inconclusive to me.

Bottom fish.....I thought the pectoral looked wide for a RES, but as is often the case, who can say that there wasn't a BG influence in the mix somewhere, sometime? I do think that the opercular size, and placement, along with the general body shape and coloration heavily favor a RES.

As stated, the gill rakers aren't visible in the photo, so what are we left with by way of identification? Are we to assign any substance to the ideas of geographic diversity, regional adaptation, and local familiarity?

Good points Tony. Up here in our natural lakes the redears are pretty drab compared to their southern counterparts as in this one. Granted it's probably a female but the males are this drab too.



Here's a more typical redear male coloration, that was, I believe, posted by Bruce Condello:



Our northern natural lake redears, that I see, don't have the distinct markings of the above fish.

Good points ! The pec fins are more BG or GSF than RES. The other morph features are much more trending to RES.

Absolutely no doubt that plasticity and local adaptation can play a big part. Color can be all over the place due to environmental factors totally unrelated to species or location.

Notice and compare the mouth size and premaxillary thickness on the two above (RES) fish are apparently larger than the first two fish posted by Sprkplug. To me this suggests that neither of Sparkglug's fish are pure RES. Size and shape of premaxillary is probably related to the RES's specialized feeding habits of selecting and removing snails - mollusks.

Not saying this is the case for this pond but something to think about.

These results show that the natural variation in

pharyngeal morphology between these populations of pumpkinseeds is primarily the result of a

plastic response to the environment, rather than a response to selection driven by the environmental

differences.
Thus, although our results provide no evidence of a genetic basis for variation in functional

morphology, the observed phenotypic plasticity represents an important mechanism

that can mould a fish’s morphology to the resource base of a lake. Ultimately, this would be

most adaptive if reduced crushing morphology resulted in the more efficient use of softbodied

prey. To date, we have no evidence for such a trade-off in pumpkinseed, although

work on its sister species, the redear sunfish, has shown that such a trade-off exists (Huckins,

1997; see also Ehlinger, 1990; Schluter, 1995; Robinson et al., 1996, for other examples

of trade-offs).

Nice looking fish. Doesn't look like they miss meals.