Eric,
Thank you for the links. Pretty interesting stuff. The energy spent guarding a nest is costly, especially when you find out that the babies aren't yours. I guess that eating the babies is a way to recoup some of that wasted energy!!
It's a good thing that humans are compassionate and can reason. My step-dad raised me. Following the bluegill model, he could have whacked me over the head and eaten me.
Dr. Willis, your thoughts about 7" bluegill are really interesting. It is easy to assume that slow growth is related to resource limitations and over-crowding. Environmental cues that stimulate earlier maturation could very well be the culprit in populations with mediocre size structure. Anglers cropping off the large breeders would probably do this. I'm wondering if the same response would occur if some huge, toothy predators such as muskies were to be released in a pond?
On another note, I fish a pond that routinely prodcues bluegill in the 9.5 to 9 and 15/16 size range. We cannot get them to 10". This has been going on for 3 years. We started throwing feed at them last year and still cannot break the 10" mark. Any ideas?
