It’s been an absolute pleasure collaborating with US Fish and Wildlife Service researchers at Pvt John Allen Fish Hatchery and Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks!

We’ve already learned a lot about Frecklebelly Madtom and potential methods to monitor populations of this rare and very, cryptic species. Overall, the madtoms responded pretty well to the surgical PIT tagging procedure:

  1. Survival was relatively high for tagged fish (~95%) and no different than the untagged, control group (~97%)
  2. We can comfortably tag pretty small madtoms. Individuals as small as 45 mm total length survived the procedure and even grew following PIT tag implantation
  3. These fish recovered very quickly following the procedure and most surgical wounds healed within 7 days
  4. Tag retention was 100%

This fish did so well that we were comfortable moving forward with a new passive gear to potentially detect PIT tagged individuals in the environment.

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We are already learning about madtom behaviors and are optimistic about using these small PIT tag readers to monitor the effectiveness of potential reintroduction efforts.

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Most of the madtoms, regardless of treatment density, used the madtom hotels during the 80-hour study period (range: 50 – 90% of individuals). Early on, it seems like the madtoms are first entering the hotels under the cover of darkness (shaded areas).

Guest post by Dr. David Schumann