(Press-News.org) WACO, Texas (March 7, 2013) - A genetic analysis by Baylor University biologists suggests that the stocking of Florida bass in Texas reservoirs impacts bass populations far beyond the actual stocking location.
The native largemouth bass has a long and nearly continuous stocking history in Texas. However, the Florida bass is widely considered a better sport fish because it grows to a greater size. Subsequently, stocking efforts in Texas reservoirs have transitioned from largemouth bass to Florida bass.
The Baylor researchers analyzed the genetic composition of 69 largemouth bass in nonstocked streams of central Texas. These results were compared to DNA from 27 largemouth bass and Florida bass specimens provided by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department that represent stock lineages as well as wild fish from outside of the sampling region.
Their analyses found the presence of Florida bass DNA in bass at all sampling locations, including sites more than 50 miles upstream from the closest documented stocking location.
"This presence of Florida bass DNA at the sampling locations indicates that the influence of stocking reaches far beyond managed reservoirs," reported Patrick D. Danley, Ph.D., assistant professor in the department of biology in Baylor's College of Arts and Sciences. "Although the stocking of non-native Florida bass in reservoirs may enhance fishing opportunities, it also has the ability to alter stream systems that are directly connected to stocked reservoirs."
Because of the methods used, the researchers could not determine if Florida bass migrated upstream or if the movement of their DNA was due to hybridization with native populations.
"At this time, we cannot determine whether our samples represent a hybridizing group of largemouth bass and Florida bass or two distinct co-occurring species," Danley said. "Further studies using nuclear markers would be useful for differentiating hybrids from pure lineages of Florida bass and largemouth bass and would shed light on the impacts of Florida bass stocking on native largemouth bass populations in central Texas," he said.
INFORMATION:
Additional researchers involved in the study include Ryan S. King, Ph.D., associate professor of biology, doctoral student Martin Husemann, and former doctoral student Jesse Ray.
The study was published in a recent issue of Transactions of the American Fisheries Society. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00028487.2012.690814
ABOUT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY
Baylor University is a private Christian university and a nationally ranked research institution, characterized as having "high research activity" by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The university provides a vibrant campus community for approximately 15,000 students by blending interdisciplinary research with an international reputation for educational excellence and a faculty commitment to teaching and scholarship. Chartered in 1845 by the Republic of Texas through the efforts of Baptist pioneers, Baylor is the oldest continually operating university in Texas. Located in Waco, Baylor welcomes students from all 50 states and more than 80 countries to study a broad range of degrees among its 11 nationally recognized academic divisions. Baylor sponsors 19 varsity athletic teams and is a founding member of the Big 12 Conference.
ABOUT BAYLOR COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
The College of Arts & Sciences is Baylor University's oldest and largest academic division, consisting of 26 academic departments and 13 academic centers and institutes. The more than 5,000 courses taught in the College span topics from art and theatre to religion, philosophy, sociology and the natural sciences. Faculty conduct research around the world, and research on the undergraduate and graduate level is prevalent throughout all disciplines. Visit http://www.baylor.edu/artsandsciences.
END
Malaria, the leading cause of death among children in Africa, could be eliminated if three-fourths of the population used insecticide-treated bed nets, according to a new study from the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS).
The study, which uses a mathematical model, found that use of insecticide-treated bed nets or ITNs positively affected the infection's reproduction number, or R, which is the primary epidemiological number used to determine the degree which a disease can spread through a population. The model concludes that if 75 percent ...
VIDEO:
This animation of NOAA GOES-13 satellite imagery from March 5-7, 2013, shows the progression of a cold front from the west associated with a low pressure system that brought snow...
Click here for more information.
The merging of two low pressure areas into a large Nor'easter on March 6 brought winter weather advisories and warnings to the Mid-Atlantic. NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared and near infrared image of the storm's power, and NASA created an animation ...
The star Eta Carinae is ready to blow. 170 years ago, this 100-solar-mass object belched out several suns' worth of gas in an eruption that made it the second-brightest star after Sirius. That was just a precursor to the main event, since it will eventually go supernova.
Supernova explosions of massive stars are common in spiral galaxies like the Milky Way, where new stars are forming all the time. They are almost never seen in elliptical galaxies where star formation has nearly ceased. As a result, astronomers were surprised to find a young-looking supernova in an old ...
With data from 73 ice and sediment core monitoring sites around the world, scientists have reconstructed Earth's temperature history back to the end of the last Ice Age.
The analysis reveals that the planet today is warmer than it's been during 70 to 80 percent of the last 11,300 years.
Results of the study, by researchers at Oregon State University (OSU) and Harvard University, are published this week in a paper in the journal Science.
Lead paper author Shaun Marcott of OSU says that previous research on past global temperature change has largely focused on the ...
HOUSTON – (March 7, 2013) – Results of a study using several imaging methods showed that CCSVI (chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency) occurs at a low rate in both people with multiple sclerosis (MS) and non-MS volunteers, contrary to some previous studies. The research by an interdisciplinary team at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) was published in a recent early online edition of the Annals of Neurology.
"Our results in this phase of the study suggest that findings in the major veins that drain the brain consistent with CCSVI ...
A new report from the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada (WCS Canada) creates a conservation strategy that will promote wildlife resiliency in the Southern Canadian Rockies to the future impacts of climate change and road use. The report's "safe passages and safe havens" were informed in part by an assessment of six iconic species—bull trout, westslope cutthroat trout, grizzly bears, wolverines, mountain goats and bighorn sheep—five of which were ranked as highly vulnerable to projected changes.
Nestled between Glacier National Park in Montana and Banff National ...
In the movie Alien, the title character is an extraterrestrial creature that can survive brutal heat and resist the effects of toxins.
In real life, organisms with similar traits exist, such as the "extremophile" red alga Galdieria sulphuraria.
In hot springs in Yellowstone National Park, Galdieria uses energy from the sun to produce sugars through photosynthesis.
In the darkness of old mineshafts in drainage as caustic as battery acid, it feeds on bacteria and survives high concentrations of arsenic and heavy metals.
How has a one-celled alga acquired such ...
Scientists at UC San Francisco have found a more precise way to turn off genes, a finding that will speed research discoveries and biotech advances and may eventually prove useful in reprogramming cells to regenerate organs and tissues.
The strategy borrows from the molecular toolbox of bacteria, using a protein employed by microbes to fight off viruses, according to the researchers, who describe the technique in the current issue of Cell.
Turning off genes is a major goal of treatments that target cancer and other diseases. In addition, the ability to turn genes off ...
To students in Jennifer Burg's computer science classes, making music is the main objective. But her goal is to get them to understand how the underlying technology works – and to love it so much they decide on a science-based career path.
And that, Burg's study has shown, has helped Wake Forest University fulfill the national imperative to increase the number of majors in the STEM disciplines of science, technology, engineering and math.
The results of Burg's research, "Computer Science 'Big Ideas' Play Well in Digital Sound and Music," will be published during the ...
Outdoor heat is associated with a significantly increased risk of emergency hospitalization for respiratory disorders in the elderly, according to a large epidemiological study of more than 12.5 million Medicare beneficiaries.
"While outdoor heat has been shown to increase respiratory mortality, evidence on the relationship between heat and respiratory hospitalizations has been less consistent," said lead author G. Brooke Anderson, PhD, postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "In the largest population ...
