What do we know about Pirate Perches?

Jack Sparrow is certainly the most unusual pirate on the scene these days, but I recently encountered a different sort of pirate with its own intrigue. I caught two little fish in a flooded area of some nearby woods and recognized them as pirate perch. Knowing the name of a plant or animal is the first step in identifying it; knowing someone who can tell you about its lifestyle, its behavior and other interesting facts is the next step.

I caught the fish in a minnow trap, a small wire mesh cylinder with inward-pointing funnels at both ends. My grandson and I had placed some in a shallow woodland pool alongside a swampy area. We also caught other captivating creatures, including leopard frog tadpoles and some seldom-seen aquatic salamanders called sirens. We brought the fish home in a plastic sandwich bag filled with swamp water and I took them to a colleague who is an ichthyologist to confirm their identity and to find out more about their biology. Dean Fletcher, a research scientist at the University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, probably knows more about pirate perches than any other living person, whether angler or fisheries biologist. The coauthor of a book on freshwater fishes, he has written one of the few modern scientific papers on pirate perches.

The pirate perch, a freshwater fish but not a true perch, is the only living species in its family. It is common and widely distributed along the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plains and up the Mississippi River Valley to the Great Lakes. But most people, even seasoned anglers, are not likely to see one. Adults are usually less than 4 inches long and are primarily nocturnal. In addition, not many people fish in small tributary streams, in weedy waters thick with root masses or in the floodplain swamps of larger rivers.


A bizarre biological trait of pirate perches involves the adult anatomy. As with other fishes, reproductive products (eggs and sperm) and body wastes are released through the vent, which is usually situated under the body near the tail. The vent is in this location in juvenile pirate perches. But as a pirate perch approaches adulthood, something strange happens. The opening gradually migrates along the underside of the fish until it is positioned under the throat, just behind the gills.

Fish biologists have speculated on the function of this odd placement of the vent since it was first described in 1824. As the scientific paper by Dean Fletcher and his colleagues says, "We solve[d] the conundrum through a combination of intensive field investigations, underwater filming, and molecular parentage analysis." In other words they studied the fish extensively in its murky habitat, filmed its behavior and used DNA analyses to see who the parents were of various offspring. Their discoveries were made in the cool waters of late winter and early spring when pirate perch begin spawning.

Through the use of modern technology, laboratory genetics and plain old-fashioned behavioral observations in the field, the scientists revealed why a fish would have a vent located in the front of the body instead of toward the back. They documented for the first time that the female actually thrusts her head into a tangled root mass and lays her eggs, a behavior unconfirmed for any other North American fish. The male quickly follows suit, putting his head into the same opening in the roots and depositing sperm to fertilize the eggs. The DNA analyses confirmed that particular offspring indeed had the parents predicted based on the mating observations.

My grandson and I released the two fish we had caught, still in good condition, back into their wetland home. Let's hope they find the right root masses to produce their young, leading to future generations of this unusual little fish. And why are they called "pirate" perch? If you put one in your home aquarium, it will apparently have no qualms about attacking smaller fish--to eat them, of course, not to take their money and jewels.

Looking at walls can be environmentally interesting

Aside from the mountains, any place within 300 miles of where I live reached temperatures approaching 100 degrees last week. During such hot weather, nature-watching can be disappointing at midday. Birds are less active. Turtles stop basking on logs. Lizards retreat to shady out-of-sight spots. Amphibians have gone underground. While contemplating that truth, I remembered a long-ago column about a habitat that will always yield some life to observe.

The habitat is in my backyard and everyone's neighborhood. It is a habitat we see daily but seldom think of in ecological terms. I am referring to walls. Yes, walls. Like the sides of houses and sheds or a fence around a garden. Walls make up a significant portion of the world's terrestrial habitats. Arnold Darlington, in his 1981 book titled "Ecology of Walls," claims that walls comprise more than 10 percent of the area habitable by plants and animals in a city.

Many factors affect the extent and composition of species inhabiting walls, including the degree of inclination. Horizontal walls have shelf space and are more likely to collect dirt and debris where seeds can root. Compass direction could matter for some species. Moss is more likely to grow on the shadiest side of a wall. The material, porosity, and composition of the wall, the climate of the region, and the history of human alteration are also major influences on what is found living on a particular wall.


One influential factor determining the vegetative character is the age of the wall itself. Algae and lichens are usually the first pioneers to become established. According to Darlington, vines rooted at the base produce the best "mural" vegetation on walls that are more than 150 years old, such as at the Ivy League schools. When walls get several centuries old and are left unattended, as with 2000 year old walls built by the Romans in many parts of Europe, they become badly decomposed. Then shrubs and trees are more likely to grow from the wall ruins. Once a wall has structure in the form of vines or other plants, or as a result of crevices, animals begin to take up residence.

The ecological perspective of walls offers some new and intriguing prospects. School projects come to mind. I once suggested that wall ecology would make ideal science fair projects. The hypothesis would relate to biodiversity and be stated something like: plants and animals will live on any available space if given enough time, even on a vertical wall. Included would be fences, concrete incinerators, and even the sides of trees, which are natural walls. Questions can be posed and answered. Do wood, brick and concrete walls in an area differ in the number and kinds of plant and animal inhabitants? Does a shaded wall have more organisms than a sunny wall? How important are the wall's age, height or position relative to ground vegetation in determining what grows on the wall?

One feature of a science fair project involving the ecology of walls that will appeal to some students is that there will be plenty of time to procrastinate. A wall ecology project could be completed one or two weeks before it is due, maybe in a day under desperate conditions. But imagine the data set a student who starts now could accumulate through summer and into fall to make the point that walls are important to the biodiversity of an area.

Examining walls around your home can even be a way to entertain yourself or children by observing the world from a different perspective. See how many different kinds of plants and animals you can find on walls in your neighborhood. It was too hot during my wall search last week to expect to find animals, but upon reflection, I realized some of my previous observations of lizards and snakes crawling, bats and treefrogs sleeping, and birds building nests had been activities that occurred on some sort of wall. Walls are much more interesting ecologically than most people would think.

Do Giant Salamanders Really Exist?

By my calculation, if all the salamanders Tom Luhring caught during his research project for his master's degree from the University of Georgia were laid end to end, they would be longer than three football fields. That has to be a world record. 

Tom, who is now a doctoral student at the University of Missouri, conducted his research at the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory in South Carolina on a group of amphibians known as the giant salamanders. These secretive creatures inhabit swamps and lowlands, spending their entire lives in the mud and waters of places where few people ever go. His studies of one species, the greater siren, have revealed more about their population ecology, movement patterns and behavior than had ever been known before. The species, which has been known to science for more than two centuries, is one of the heaviest salamanders in the Western Hemisphere. Yet little was known of certain aspects of its biology before Tom's research.

The largest salamanders in North America are aquatic species that live in the East. The greater siren reaches lengths of more than three feet. Another giant salamander of the Southeast, the amphiuma, has a record length of almost four feet. Like sirens, amphiumas are seldom seen by people despite their large size. That their scientific name (Amphiuma) is used as their common name in most places is indicative of their rarity, although they are called lamper eels or Congo eels in some regions.

Two other salamanders, the hellbender and the mudpuppy, or waterdog, also qualify as giants, although neither gets as long as the biggest amphiumas and sirens. The mudpuppy, reaching a length of a foot and a half, is primarily a northern species, found in lakes, ponds and rivers. Hellbenders are bulky creatures that can reach two and half feet long. They live in cold mountain streams and rivers from Alabama to New York. The world's largest salamander, from Japan, is closely related to the hellbender; it can be more than five feet long.

Sirens and amphiumas, despite their enormous size relative to other amphibians, have minuscule legs with toes. An amphiuma more than a yard in length will have legs less than an inch long and no thicker than a toothpick. Amphiumas and sirens are short-legged, dark-colored, slippery creatures, but distinguishing one from the other is easy: sirens have only two of the seemingly useless legs, whereas amphiumas have four. In addition, sirens have external, visible gills; amphiumas have an opening alongside the head that leads to internal gills.

Sirens and amphiumas are slimy animals that seldom leave the water; they would soon dehydrate if left on dry ground. But both live in aquatic habitats that can dry up completely during long-term droughts. What do great big water-dwelling salamanders do then? First, as their lake home dries up, they burrow into the remaining mud. Then they secrete a slimy body covering, which hardens into a cocoon that can keep them moist for a few months to more than a year. When the rains return and the cocoon is exposed to water, the siren or amphiuma emerges to begin feeding on aquatic insects and other invertebrates that have also survived the drought.

Sirens and amphiumas kept in aquariums as pets have been known to live for decades, but no one knows how long they can live in the wild. Their courtship and mating behavior are also still a mystery, even for specimens kept in captivity. Amphibian biologists are not sure how closely related sirens are to other salamanders, and some even argue that sirens are not salamanders at all, but some other type of amphibian. 

America's giant salamanders bring to the fore two ecological insights. One, scientists know relatively little about the biology of some of the largest animals in our midst, which means we still have much to learn about the world around us. Second is the realization that some of our local creatures are as fascinating in their own way as any exotic species with a starring role in a nature show. 

Invaders make life interesting

Two disturbing types of invasions have occurred along the Mississippi River in recent times. Unstoppable, ever-rising floodwaters that are invading a region and know no master will always catch our attention. Residents over thousands of square miles of floodplain have been at the water's mercy. Once a flood is recognized as becoming a problem it is often too late to take effective action.

Let's hope that being too late does not apply to another type of invader to the region, one of an entirely different nature. I saw a disquieting photo awhile back of a man in Mississippi holding an ugly-faced, meat-eating piranha, a native of the Amazon Basin. The fish is known from tales about "man-eating" attack behavior on cattle, horses and humans in the water. Although some of the stories are overstated, this fish and most others are not something we want to become established as invasive species in any rivers or lakes outside their native range.

An invasive species is one brought to a region, usually from another continent, that successfully establishes itself. A piranha in a river in North America means somebody inappropriately released an aquarium pet into a waterway. As far as I know, piranhas have not become established in any U.S. aquatic system. But should they do so, a potential man-eating fish in our midst would quickly get our attention.

Pleas are made daily to federal and state governments to set controls on one invasive threat or another. But like a rising river, it may be too late to stop the flood. New introduced species enter our country and others every day. Transportation on a global scale is universal by land, air and sea. Regulations have been set for importing some plants and animals, but considering the traffic overload, the controls and enforcement are minimal.

One fact about invasive species is that few generalizations can be made about what will determine the success or failure of any particular species. The findings of scientists can be contradictory. For example, three separate research studies of invasive plants in Great Britain identified certain seed characteristics that were in common to successful invaders. However, one study revealed that having large seeds made a plant more likely to be successful. Another study found that small seeds were the key to success. The third study concluded that seed size did not matter. So much for making predictions about which exotic plants will be most likely to populate England.

Another confusing example from scientific study of invasive species is that of the Brazilian pepper tree, a plant in the same family as poison ivy and poison sumac. The tree has become a major pest in southern Florida because it outcompetes native trees and supplants most varieties. According to one authority, Floridians had kept Brazilian pepper trees as ornamental plants for decades with no problems. Then suddenly in the 1980s they began to grow wild and create environmental havoc. No one had any idea in advance that they might become a problem. The ecological paradox is that scientists remain uncertain about whether any guiding ecological principles can be applied to predicting whether an introduced species will become a dominant and invasive part of the landscape or simply disappear.

Major laws and regulations have been proposed about how we should deal with the present-day pervasiveness of introduced species. The solutions make politicians uneasy and biologists do not always agree on what they are. But if we do not do something, many environments will be changed in ways that are unquestionably negative from most perspectives.

Anyone living alongside a flooding river is unhappy about the situation. Even before floodwaters subside, people vow to become more vigilant about future flood control measures and about rebuilding. Being invaded by river floodwaters is a process with an ending; the water will eventually go away. The problem with many invasive species is that they never will. We need to be alert for the first signs that a new one is about to invade; we certainly don't want to find that flooded waters are transporting something like piranhas into new neighborhoods.

Whit Gibbons is an ecologist and environmental educator with the University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory
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How do floods and tornados affect wildlife?

The funnel of fury that passed through Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in late April left thousands of people reeling with personal losses of property, pets, and even lives. The terrifying tornado destroyed homes, businesses, and entire communities. A different environmental tragedy struck the Midwest as record-breaking floods breached levees of the country's mightiest rivers. Floods and tornados can be devastating from a human perspective, and people must be our first and foremost concern. But some have asked, how do such natural disasters affect native wildlife?

The answer is simple. The overall impact on natural ecosystems and wildlife communities is minimal in the long run. Although the local impacts of two-story high flooding or 200-mph winds are evident immediately, all species native to an area had ancestors that were able to weather similar extremes of wind and water. With us today are the species that have persisted because former generations faced similar weather phenomena and survived.


Although temporarily gone from wind-ravaged or flooded areas, birds and other animals will soon return. Native trees that have disappeared will soon be replaced by seedlings of the same species. Although of small consolation to a homeless family or the owner of lost or damaged property, no native species of plant or animal will be lost because of tornados or floods.

We do not perceive wildlife as suffering the devastating effects from floods and tornados in the same way as people because we measure impacts differently for wild animals than we do for ourselves. With people, and even with our pets, we empathize with each individual who suffers. We have all seen photos or videos of someone stranded atop a house in the floodplain of a swollen river, people examining a pile of wood, metal, and paper that was once their home, or police searching for a missing person beneath a collapsed building. Even the rescue of a pet can make national news. And most people relate personally and with empathy to each incident.

In contrast, with wild animals we hear a few stories of the plight of individuals, but for the most part we focus on how a population or the species itself fared. Wrens and robins unquestionably were killed or displaced from many local communities in Alabama by tornados. But no species of bird was irreparably impaired. Other individuals of each species will eventually return, emigrating from surrounding unaffected areas.

On another scale, few animals have "personal property" that can be lost in a tornado or flood. All a coon or turtle has to do is survive. Their home is where they choose to be at any particular moment. One group of animals with structural assets are birds with nests, and indeed this spring's natural disasters have eliminated many a family of bird. But birds are resilient. In the long run, more nests will be built and more eggs will be laid, eventually even in what are now destroyed habitats. Among other property losses by wildlife, beavers lose dams and lodges due to powerful flooding. But in the nature of beavers, they simply set about repairing the damage as soon as water levels decline, and their life goes on.

Despite the worst weather-related natural disasters the world can offer--floods and tornados, as well as hurricanes, droughts, and forest fires--the ancestors of all our native wildlife evolved to deal with them. None of these phenomena ultimately affect healthy populations of wildlife. And of course no wildlife affect the weather.

But humans are different. Personal lives can be permanently altered by the vagaries of weather. And we are different in another way in that we influence some natural disasters. Damage from some floods can be attributed to the configuration and structural integrity of levees, dikes. and dams. We are responsible for some out-of-control forest fires because we have suppressed natural burning patterns. Are we also responsible for dramatic climate changes brought about by carbon dioxide emissions emanating from industrial countries like ours? The wildlife doesn't care, but should we?

Send environmental questions to ecoviews@gmail.com.

Whit Gibbons is an ecologist and environmental educator with the University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory.

Antiques and biodiversity, a solution to ‘spousal entrapment‘

An ecologist friend recently asked for advice about how to deal with a situation involving his wife. He said he knew I had once faced the same problem and he hoped I would have some helpful suggestions for him. Imagine my disquiet as I waited to hear what kind of marital difficulty he thought I might provide a solution for. Turns out his wife wanted him to go with her to visit several antique stores--and I did have a solution. Several years ago, I had even written a column about how I solved the problem now facing my friend.

Here is how I dealt with having to accompany my wife on a two-day expedition to explore antique stores: I conducted an ecological study of biodiversity in the wilds of the antique shop habitat. The biodiversity I found in the 21 antique stores we visited was astonishing.


Feeling a bit like Walter Mitty, I decided to approach the study in the spirit of an ecologist beginning a species survey and environmental assessment. For each store, which I defined as a "habitat," the objective was to determine the kinds and abundance of species and to identify the factors responsible for their presence or absence. Within the first 15 minutes of wandering around, I had recorded on my survey list a dozen Indian elephants, an American armadillo, and an African hippopotamus.

Several parallels exist between examining biodiversity in antique shops and examining it in natural habitats. Both locales have features that can influence how many species occupy them. Size of the store/habitat can be important, as can a variety of intrinsic features. For example, simple ecosystems like caves and small islands ordinarily have lower biodiversity than more complex habitats such as tropical rain forests or southeastern wetlands. Likewise, antique stores can be simple environments that specialize in a single type of merchandise, such as Victorian furniture or Oriental vases. A store that sells china, furniture, silverware, clocks, and estate jewelry from a variety of cultures and eras is obviously more complex.

Indeed, the greater the diversity of items, cultures, and time periods represented in a store, the higher the diversity of plant and animal species present. One store specialized in place settings produced in China from 1760 to 1910 designed to be exported. The rose medallion pattern characteristically had colorful butterflies and birds and pink peonies. I found a dragonfly on one, and on a similar style known as mandarin I found bats and a lotus plant. But aside from these specimens, along with a few more kinds of flowers I could not identify, that was pretty much it. Low biodiversity.

Meanwhile, at a much bigger store that looked like it held the loot from a pirate ship that had been engaged in global plundering for five centuries, the biodiversity was overwhelming. Among the wild animals popping up everywhere--on furniture, plates, brass door knockers--were owls, monkeys, foxes, storks, frogs, beetles, bears, lions (lots of lions), parrots, and turtles. Rare sightings were made of snails, zebras, lizards, and cobras. Domestic species included numerous dogs and horses, occasional donkeys, ducks, and cats, even a few pigs. A botanist could probably have categorized the plant families represented. I identified ivy, grapevines, lilies, and legumes. The ecological message in all this is that wildlife is woven deeply into the artistry of many forms of antiques, with certain ones being closely associated with specific times in history.

One mystery emerged. After looking at more than 50 chandeliers, I had found only a single grapevine twining around one, plus butterflies and birds associated with another. Perhaps this was sampling bias of some sort, but the chandeliers seemed to represent a broad array of vintages, yet a sterile habitat without the life that pervades so many other art forms.

My friend agreed a biodiversity quest would be one way to endure the trip and accepted the challenge of learning more about antique store environments. On his expedition he plans to specialize in chandeliers.

Send environmental questions to ecoviews@gmail.com.

Whit Gibbons is an ecologist and environmental educator with the University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory.

Who got the Wild South Conservation award?

Wild South is a nonprofit grassroots organization based in Asheville, N.C. As the name suggests, its focus is on natural habitats in the South, wild ones at that. In fact, its mission is "to inspire people to protect the wild character and natural legacy of the South."

This year Wild South's Roosevelt-Ashe Society Conservation Award for Outstanding Journalist in Conservation was given to someone who is most deserving at many levels. I am especially pleased that the recipient of the award is someone I have written about twice in the last decade as a protector of the environment: John Wathen of Tuscaloosa, Ala. 

The namesakes for the Roosevelt-Ashe conservation awards are Teddy Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States, and W. W. Ashe, a botanist at the University of North Carolina in the early 1900s. Both were ahead of their time in the contributions they made to forest conservation. The Roosevelt-Ashe awards are given in eight different conservation categories, including the one for outstanding journalist. 

Wathen received the award for his outstanding research and public media communications regarding the environmental situation following the disastrous BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Although that endeavor was somewhat different from those I wrote about in earlier columns, in some ways John's award-winning work in the Gulf was simply an extension of his longstanding environmental efforts 200 miles upstream from Mobile Bay, where a small tributary, Hurricane Creek, enters the Black Warrior River on its way to the Gulf of Mexico.

John Wathen has done a commendable job of putting Hurricane Creek center stage and then shining a spotlight on it. A video on the Friends of Hurricane Creek website (www.hurricane-creek.org) shows him in a canoe with his dog Smokey Joe as they travel along the beautiful creek, "the crown jewel of Alabama." His environmental message comes through loud and clear, with no mistaking whom he views as perpetrators of habitat destruction and degradation. "As you head downstream, you paddle through steep canyons and high rock bluffs with spires that extend along the banks. As beautiful as they are, it's unfortunate that a lot of these rock bluffs have been undermined for the coal and [then] . . . abandoned." He goes on to say, "There's still a great deal of active strip mining in the watershed tearing down our mountains and pushing the rubble over into the valleys. . . . Our streams look like bleeding messes."

As John Wathen, says, our natural streams "are not just industrial waste conduits. They are the life and blood of the earth, and they must be protected at all cost." He does not indict just the coal mining industry for irresponsible environmental behavior. On the video he notes that "as bad as the coal mines are for the watershed, there's more trouble downstream." Here he transfers blame to the Alabama Department of Transportation, which he says is "known as the single largest contributor of sediment to the state's waterways."

Paddling along the part of the creek known as the M-bend, he points out that ALDOT is trying "to put a four-lane bridge through this section of the creek where I am . . . now." "This section" of the creek is a stretch of unsurpassed beauty that will never be the same if bridge construction is allowed to go forward. John believes that construction sediment in public waterways, bridges that spoil extraordinarily beautiful sites, and other destructive environmental practices are unacceptable. Perhaps his efforts will eventually inspire a public outcry loudly and vehemently protesting the ruin of that portion of their natural heritage.

"This land," as Woody Guthrie reminds us, "belongs to you and me." Our natural habitats do indeed belong to the people - to you and me. Organizations such as Wild South work to instill "a reverence for our public lands and the native natural life they support." I applaud individuals like John Wathen, people who are committed to realizing that vision, and organizations like Wild South that give such people the recognition they deserve.

Send environmental questions to ecoviews@gmail.com.

Whit Gibbons is an ecologist and environmental educator with the University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory.