The Erythristic Gar Conundrum...

[kevinfleming21]

I'm not convinced on the new title for these gars. I have to agree with you Solomon, the fact is while the coloration is unusual, I do not think it is "dramatic" enough to be classified as erythristic .

 

[Polypterus]

I'm totally missing this "Red morph" thing.. Nothing I see in any of the fish labeled as such really are anything unusual. We see variants in these fish all the time and sometimes multiple variants in the same areas. Labeling them as erythristic or whatever is not really anything accurate to what they are.. Environment, condition and genetics plays a large part of what a fish may appear to be at any given time when it comes to this so-called morph. A perfect example can be seen here...

Both of these fish are SPG, one was collected from a very clear area, Other from water containing high Tanic acid content. Both at about 6 months appeared identical.

This fish was from a clear lake it slowly changed this way for a few months then darkened again to what Solomon and I have called "Alternate" variation..

More later when I get a chance....
But what is this about spawning ALG getting red bellies? First time I have known of this... Just a note though when Gar are dead they often bleed between scales.. Just a note there...

 

[E_americanus]

Hi there - we were both typing at the same time I see! See my previous post also - what do you think about it being breeding dress ? Have you tried keeping one in captivity for a while to see if the coloration remains the same, or "goes away?"
I've studied fish behavior - primarily Cichlid parental adoptive behavior, and nonverbal (obviously) communication, for a couple of decades. In other words, basically I was saying that my fish passion goes deeper than just keeping fish.

yes, so i agree we both have additional interests in fishes outside the hobby, but i think many people on this forum could say the same thing too. i know we all learn from each other. that being said, i guess i was interested if it was anything more specifically related to gars...we know cichlid behavior is pretty far off from gars (although some broadly general principles could be applied that even i could make about cichlids - plus a good friend of mine actually did his dissertation on cichlid pair-bonding and parental behavior; and stating "non-verbal" behavior as a descriptor is obviously unnecessary; further, i think we could all say we have studied fish behavior for a couple decades...); again, i was curious in relation to gars since we of course have had some conversations about lungfishes in the past too. but i digress...

Recently, somebody on here posted an ALG that had been killed, that had a crimson red underside that certainly looked like breeding dress. It wasn't localized enough to be bloodstains - but if you are not aware of breeding dress in ALG's , then that may have been the case. Many of the photos on Google of mature ALG's taken also show reddish tint along the underside. I know this is pretty unscientific, but hey...

and no, this is not breeding pattern in any way; as Richard stated in his post above (which also illustrated -very well- other points i was trying to make via this discussion), that is just the blood running in between the scales...we see this in most gator gar fishing images, and most really big gars will do this to some extent. so that is just fishing mortality/stress effects, nothing to do with breeding.--
--solomon

 

[E_americanus]

I'm totally missing this "Red morph" thing.. Nothing I see in any of the fish labeled as such really are anything unusual. We see variants in these fish all the time and sometimes multiple variants in the same areas. Labeling them as erythristic or whatever is not really anything accurate to what they are.. Environment, condition and genetics plays a large part of what a fish may appear to be at any given time when it comes to this so-called morph. A perfect example can be seen here...
View attachment 850545
Both of these fish are SPG, one was collected from a very clear area, Other from water containing high Tanic acid content. Both at about 6 months appeared identical.
View attachment 850546
This fish was from a clear lake it slowly changed this way for a few months then darkened again to what Solomon and I have called "Alternate" variation..

More later when I get a chance....
But what is this about spawning ALG getting red bellies? First time I have known of this... Just a note though when Gar are dead they often bleed between scales.. Just a note there...

agreed! well-said and very well-illustrated...but you knew that and most knew we would feel the same way, haha --
--solomon

 

[E_americanus]

First, shouldn't red gars be described as hypererythristic? If red coloration exists at some point in wild types then an extreme variant would be a hyper- morphology.

Secondly, any long term captive research been done to see if color remains over time?

Thirdly, any breeding programs show direct transmission of trait to offspring? I would be willing to grow out fry if anyone wants to ship them to me. We need controlled growout with different feeding regimes.

I love you this real discussion in this forum. I am a PhD zoology student and I think we miss out on a lot of opportunity to do real research in this hobby. We come into contact with a lot of more than many of the scientists, we should take it upon ourselves to do some of this preliminary research.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using MonsterAquariaNetwork App

where are you studying in the state of MI? would be curious to know as a couple of us here (Polypterus/Richard and myself) have studied gars quite extensively here (and could be expanded to plenty of other regions too).

as for the hyper- comment, i think that is all semantics in the hobby really...we see "gold gars" and the like come from the wild and some morphs coming from captive breeding and they are all just referred to as xanthic, not hyper-xanthic. further, it does (at least in some cases) have direct transmission to offspring - tropical gars in Mexico have been extensively spawned and the leucistic condition has been transmitted to offspring successfully many times over (also saw this for myself when i was down there this summer...there are some photos on this forum too).

i agree with you very much in that there should be more cross-over between traditional science and aquarium science as both groups could learn so much from the combined work...shame it doesn't happen more often than it does, but we are generally pretty open to that sort of thing here on the gar forum and most members here participate in that in some capacity. i would assume (or at least hope) that similar combinations/efforts exist in other forum sections and other venues--
--solomon