Originally Posted by anthropic
Originally Posted by Sunil
Originally Posted by 1997pond
BG spawned multiple times last Summer with fry visible in large quantites last year continuing to this Spring. I had been attributing the lack of LMB growth (for my small sample size this Spring) to a stunted population with little growth potential. I'll see how it plays out through this July and go from there.


There is certainly much talk about the limited growth potential of LMB that are stunted.

On the flip side though, those same stunted LMB will reproduce, and the new YOY LMB hopefully have better forage conditions and could grow to full potential.

Considering that, aggressively culling of the stunted LMB will make better conditions for newly born LMB.

Researchers have discovered that people who've experienced famine suffer epigenetic changes that make their descendants less healthy. I wonder if stunted fish have similar effects? If so, may be another reason to cull them quickly!

I am not aware of that study. But I am aware of a study conducted through generational records of a Scandinavian population that provided evidence of epigenetics and made it a science founded in hard to argue with evidence. (Until recently people who thought that environment did anything genetically beyond natural selection were considered cranks and kooks.) Anyways, in that study it was just the opposite. It wasn't times of scarcity that caused the problem. It was times of abundance when wheat crops succeeded very well. If this occurred during and through adolescence that generation had no ill effects but their offspring were susceptible to diabetes. So there is at least one example that having an abundance of food didn't lead to better health in subsequent generations. A difficult environment of scarcity may select the strongest genes where its easy to argue the opposite would allow inferior genes to survive.

Last edited by jpsdad; 04/13/22 09:20 PM.
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