I'm going to say with the amount of research I've been doing, Dat Dar is PURE PS and I'll need it alive for verification. If you could provide a few more to go with it, I'm sure I could properly ID them bad boys...
From my limited experience with PS I think it is a male PS. I've seen them 9" and the rare one at 10"; really exceptional sizes for PS. I've seen them most often in clear ponds with submerged weeds. The clear water no doubt allows them to better find invertebrates and snails.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 03/02/2103:22 PM.
aka Pond Doctor & Dr. Perca Read Pond Boss Magazine - America's Journal of Pond Management
Looks like a PS to me. lots of those around this part of the country. I visited some friends camping at a campground a few years back. My buddy said to bring some fishing gear because a pond at the campground ( Eastern OH ) has very large BG. I took my ultra lite rod and some small jigs. I saw some blue gills and pumpkinseeds near the shore line spawning. I ended up catching a huge PS that was close to 10". There were loads of shore line weeds at this BOW, which made fishing very tough. I need to talk to him to get some info on this pond. I'm curious to how/ why these sunfish are getting so big.
If I could get hold of pumkinseed sunfish, I would forgo crappie in my third pond and focus on these. Really pretty fish. 3rd pond only has FHM and lake chubsuckers so far (if the LCS survived the transplant from below the pipe coming out of my 2nd pond).
They ARE pretty fish!! A local lake has both PS and RES, I will be talking to the guy that caught that one to see if I can get some brood stock from that pond.....
Linked are images of hybrids I made in lab several years back. I took a mass of eggs from a single female pumpkinseed and divided it into several lots. Each lost was fertilized by a different male representing the following species; northern bluegill, green sunfish, redear, warmouth, central longear sunfish, western dollar sunfish, redspotted sunfish, and orangespotted sunfish. Each group was raised in aquaria well past sexual maturity to see what they look like and if they were fertile. I had at least 20 individuals per lot except from the warmouth cross to choose from.
Of particular interest to this thread was the redear hybrid. The redear hybrid had very little pattern compared to the others. I do not think pumpkinseed and redear are close relatives.
Jim I cant open the links. Would love to see and post them on PB.
FYI centrarchids relationship chart.
PS and RES are fairly closely related see chart (but not as close as once thought). Both have pharyngeal teeth/plates (eat snails). But who knows in genetics what traits will be dominate and show up.
Investigating phylogenetic relationships of sunfishes and black basses (Actinopterygii: Centrarchidae) using DNA sequences from mitochondrial and nuclear genes Thomas J. Near,* Daniel I. Bolnick, and Peter C. Wainwright Center for Population Biology, One Shields Avenue, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA Received 27 September 2003; revised 17 December 2003 Available online 28 February 2004
Third, L. microlophus and L. gibbosus are the only Lepomis species with specialized diets, feeding primarily on snails. Both species exhibit behavioral and morphological specializations that function in crushing snail shells. The specializations include expanded tooth areas on the upper and lower pharyngeal jaws, hypertrophied pharyngeal jaw muscles, and a specialized muscle motor pattern (Lauder, 1983, 1986; Wainwright and Lauder, 1992). Previous morphology-based phylogenetic hypotheses proposed L. microlophus and L. gibbosus as sister species, indicating that these specializations for molluscivory have had a single evolutionary origin (Bailey, 1938; Mabee, 1993). However, both MP and BML analyses {Both maximum parsimony (MP) and Bayesian maximum likelihood (BML) analyses were used to generate phylogenetic hypotheses from the DNA sequence data} do not recover this relationship, but instead result in a set of strongly supported nodes with L. gibbosus as the sister species to the clade (L. microlophus (L. punctatus and L. miniatus)) (Figs. 1 and 3). L. miniatus and L. punctatus are not molluscivores and do not exhibit the specialized behavior or morphology observed in L. gibbosus and L. microlophus (Lauder, 1983, 1986). The result of this phylogenetic analysis indicates that ecological diversification between generalist and specialist strategies may have a higher frequency of change in the course of the evolutionary history of Lepomis than previously hypothesized.
The pharyngeal apparatus of the Redear and Pumpkinseed could easily be similar by convergence. Genetic markers employed are not best for deep time divergence. I feel more comfortable with such analysis run on populations with a younger genus. For intergeneric comparisons I think better to be a combination of multiple nuclear and mitochondrial DNA loci. The problem is that this has been the only analysis to date attempting the family Centrarchidae. It does cost money to do it.
The part that caught my eye initially involved the Bantam Sunfish, which I know probably as well as any author out there. They have it lumped closest to the Green Sunfish. I know that critter as well. When you look closely at the Bantam Sunfish, it looks a lot more like the Banded Sunfish in particular, which has a lot in common with the Bluespotted Sunfish and Blackbanded Sunfishes. The life history of those four species is also very similar. Breeding them in aquariums where they can exhibit natural behaviors helps set them all apart from the genus Lepomis in which the Green Sunfish resides. Bantams did not generate viable hybrids with any listed as Lepomis sp. I tried to cross with it follow procedure described in my first post. Green Sunfish produces viable hybrids with all the other Lepomis, except for the Bantam Sunfish.
Then you have the Warmouth. There is a major directional viability issue with crosses you make with it and members of the genus Lepomis. None of the other crosses within Lepomis cause that problem. Warmouth also have huge behavioral differences when it comes to courtship and behaviors otherwise when compared to other the other Lepomis spp.
Bantams I think should be in Enneacanthus and Warmouth should be either outside or basal to the genus Lepomis.
Then you do not want to get me going on the Bluegill clan.
Last edited by Jim Wetzel; 03/02/2103:35 PM.
Aquaculture Cooperative Research / Extension Lincoln University of Missouri
All of these studies (many more listed in the one linked) make it clear that much is unknown and many initial thoughts are later learned to be erroneous. You are right in your thoughts that much more study needs to be done.
I had a triploid pumpkinseed x redear two that had to be generated by more than one pumpkinseed sperm getting into a redear egg. The individual looked much more like a pumpkinseed although it was a lot larger with a mouth little like a redear.
Aquaculture Cooperative Research / Extension Lincoln University of Missouri