Eric, page 57 of Jan/Feb 2021 PB magazine, article named Fish Growth. Study you cited: Latitudinal Growth Effects on Predator-Prey Interactions between Largemouth Bass and Bluegills in Ponds. North American Journal of Fisheries Management 5: 227 - 232, 1985 by Modde and Scalet.
What got me interested is that I've often wondered why Northern LMB are so much more aggressive, and also why they didn't grow as large despite being much more eager to feed. Of course, the answers will certainly involve more than one factor, but it occurred to me that if, as Modde & Scalet found, northern BG were only half as vulnerable to LMB predation as southern BG, this would likely have profound consequences, both behaviorally and epigenetically.
One of these consequences would be to encourage aggressive feeding for northern LMB to make the most of their much more limited predatory opportunities. Southern LMB, on the other hand, would be under far less pressure to feed aggressively. Northern feeding strategy comes with risks & costs, after all, including exposure to other predators (including larger LMB, herons, gators, etc) and burning lots of calories. Adaptation can happen fast epigenetically, such as how caught LMB pass along lure shy habits to their progeny, so I hypothesized this was at work.
Last edited by anthropic; 04/22/21 04:25 PM.
