Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat WILL FISH APPEAR IN A FISHLESS POND????

Excellent find on that paper. Clearly, some fish eggs, specifically adapted to desiccation and surviving tough conditions that have evolved to inhabit temporary water, can indeed be transported within bird's digestive systems. I am not aware of any previous experimental evidence to support this. Thank you for sharing!

Having seen a Great Blue Heron lift a LMB out of my pond, then fly across the pond and drop it to flop around on the far back, I have no doubt that given a million GBH, a million stocked ponds, a million unstocked ponds, and enough time, the herons can eventually recreate all the works of William Shakespeare.

Have you ever seen how GBH catch fish?

Many times. And I have caught many fish what I resume are GBH bill scars down one or both sides of their back.

The stork brings baby humans. Just stands to reason that the stork also brings baby fish.

After the GBH drops the bass by mistake into the new pond, how does he know to return with another bass of the opposite sex and drop it in the same pond?

It is fascinating that this thread started 11 years ago and we have no better proofs than before and have just as muh fun debating it as before!

Maybe for the magazine Bob or someone else can dig a few puddles in the south and set up game cameras. The PB meisters from the south say that every puddle of water will self stock with gambusia, even puddles on a two track.

Just let the newly dug pond set, run the game cams on a motion trigger and record what wildlife traffic visits the pond.

Then when minnows appear, seine them and see what they are. By the time minnows are in there we should have an idea if the only visitors with birds, or raccoons, or GB or whatever.

in re-reading the thread I also learned that Mike Otto used to post here, on this very forum, how awesome is that! I was bummed to see that his last post was in 2013!

We now know that gambusia eggs can survive the alimentary canal of at least one waterbird. We did not know that until this recent publication.

There needs to be a correction and clarification at least for reproduction of mosquito fish aka Gambusia. Gambusia do not lay eggs so the eggs cannot pass through the digestive tract of any bird or animal.
“Mosquitofish is a small live-bearing fish. After a gestational period of 21 to 28 days, the young are born alive at a size of approximately eight to nine mm total length (Krumholz 1948). Larger females produce more offspring (Krumholz 1948). Brood sizes of one to 315 young have been reported (Barney and Anson 1921, Moyle 1976). Females annually have four to five broods (Krumholz 1948).”

”They feed primarily on zooplankton and invertebrate prey at the top of the water column. Adults are known to feed on their young opportunistically (Benoit et al. 2000). This species is also well known for its high feeding capacity. Chips (2004) observed maximum consumption rates of 42–167% of their body weight per day.”
Advanced reading.
https://www.fws.gov/fisheries/ANS/erss/highrisk/Gambusia-affinis-ERSS-FINAL.pdf

My mistake, paper talks about killifish eggs, not Gambusia.
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.2774

And for a minute I thought this was April 1.

I should know better. Gambusia look and breed like guppies. Just had a brain fade...

I set up a game camera to catch a pic and the time of day the otters that were showing up. The Moultree camera would then send me a pic to my cell phone. I had to remove the camera because I was getting around 50 pic per day sent to my ph. of different animals, birds that walk my pier. With that many maybe just one of those might transport fish or fish eggs to new waters.

Many years ago before I had my pond dug. I had a small backhoe,and dug a test hole as deep as I could go. I wanted to see if the water would stay. To my surprise the hold ended up with minnows in it.

That is an interesting test.

I've got a backhoe. That might be interesting to try. Have to do it where absolutely no water flow could bring them in from elsewhere.

Exactly!

Thank you thank you snrub! I'm not trying to be the naysayer, probably if puddles of water everywhere 'show up' with minnows then there has to be a scientific reason.

In the old days many of the living things that were hard to see were proven by simple experiments by setting up an item that didn't seem to have any of them in it, putting it in a controlled environment and later finding living things crawling out of it after a while and then connecting the dots.

I would think in warm weather climates in the south people from many states and many climates could try this. Dig a hole, or identify a drainage dip that is dry, let it fill with water (rain water, ground water, it might make a difference!) and then observe.

Of course to observe you would have to have a pretty good camera system that can watch it day and night! At least it should be a fun experiment.

The thing about science is that things supported by reasonable evidence are incorporated in science and those that are not are excluded. However, evidence and understanding change over time so things accepted by science as true have become known as false, and things once thought false have become known as true. Current science is based on our current evidence and knowledge. The posted study showing that killifish can pass through a water bird's digestive tract and survive makes it likely that this species can colonize new bodies of water via this route. Of special note is how far such transplantation might occur since this particular species seems to have eggs adapted to drying out and withstanding other harsh conditions.

As most of you know science is a big part of my PB involvement. One interesting aspect is watching the changes in knowledge as it improves over time. What one study indicates as true often changes over the years as more facts are discovered. This has to be so because imperfect humans are involved in the process. By in large it is the human experience - we are not perfect so we must improve over time.

Merry Christmas and be assured that there are many , many questions left as unanswered so far on our collective journey.

Has anyone else ever seen frogs come down in a thunderstorm? Saw this once and could hardly believe my eyes... but they were plopping down on the driveway and yard......

Rare events are more difficult to investigate using scientific methods. The longevity of fish eggs from different species should be amenable to experimentation under different environmental conditions as should the frequency of eggs being found on waterbirds. Together, the movement of viable eggs among bodies of water at various distances apart could be estimated from such data. I expect all manner of things could rain down from a water spout twister when it peters out.

I agree flooding is not a way of bringing fishes in pond.