Image Details The tail end of an Alligator Gar. Now we’re trying to improve that reputation, showing they have value as food fish, bring balance to ecosystems, and even recently showing they have value for genomics work and potentially for biomedical research. I think it’s a matter of perspective with how gars have been treated over the years. Then, when we think of a more colonial perspective, different fish took a higher ranking. They make jewelry and arrowheads out of the hides. I say they’ve had a historically bad reputation, but really, if you go back further in time, Native Americans and other indigenous people used to eat gar. I think that lends itself to the poor reputation of gars. In some cases it ’ s panfish or game fish but, if that’s what’s most abundant in the system, we need predators to maintain balance in any given fish community or the broader ecosystem. In many cases they ’ re eating shad and other forage fish. Gars are predators - they ’ re going to eat what ’ s most abundant. There’s also this idea that gars eat game fish. It’s a plight of a lot of freshwater fishes. That’s caused issues with their population-just like with paddlefish, sturgeon, and other migratory fishes that need access to floodplains and to spawning grounds. As we’ve dammed rivers and leveed in certain sections of flood plains, we’ve cut off gars from their spawning areas. One of the big threats is definitely habitat loss. So we think maybe that’s how that toxicity might have evolved. Our working hypothesis is you don’t find those conventionally respiring fish there (like bluegill or other egg predators), but you do find crustacean predators like crawfish. You would think if your eggs are going to be toxic, why not have them be toxic to the animals you’re sharing the environment with? Gars spawn in relatively shallow water that’s extremely warm. What’s also interesting about gar egg toxicity is that they’re toxic to mammals, birds and invertebrates, but not to other fish or some reptiles. What else is unusual is that bowfin - the closest relatives to gars - have edible eggs (these two groups are still separated by a decent chunk of time between divergence). But we don’t know if it’s bacterial-based or if the fish are producing it (this would be extremely rare). I think a study that came out in 2020 that determined it might be a particular phospholipid. Gary Lafleur and his lab down here at Nicholls State have been looking at gar eggs and trying to determine the specifics of their toxicity. The short answer is: we don’t know exactly what makes them poisonous. They’ve got poisonous eggs, right? Is that unique to gar and what about them makes them poisonous? Gars may not be able to turn on a dime, but they’re much more flexible than we give them credit for - they can manage a little S-curve or C-shape bend. With that comes a bit less flexibility compared to fish with ctenoid or cycloid scales. The scales are interlocking - almost like chain mail. They’re not quite impenetrable, but that tough hide is very difficult to get through if you’re a predator. Can you tell us more about the scales? What are the advantages and disadvantages? Image Details Alligator Gar have armor-plated ganoid scales made up of a material very similar to the enamel on our teeth. They can easily get up to eight feet long maybe even close to 10 feet historically, but we don’t have great records of that. As far as I know, it’s the largest even compared to fossil gars. The alligator gar is the largest gar species alive today. Ferrara and other researchers at Nicholls State University. In 2017, a job opportunity came up there and now I’m down here working on gar alongside Dr. And it was at this small university in southeastern Louisiana. Man, I mean seeing an alligator gar for the first time in the wild…that’s definitely imprinted on my memory. We were like, “W e need to see these alligator gars.” Sure enough, we got one that was just under five feet long. Another guy from Canada and I were like the northern gar guys down there. They said, “ We’re going to be sampling alligator gar.” And I was like, “ WHAT?!?” I quickly got on a computer, changed my flight, and made sure I could be part of that. Ferrara and her grad students said, “ Hey, we’re heading back to Thibodaux to do some field work…you interested in joining?” Fish and Wildlife Service and Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. I was excited to meet a bunch of people who were studying gar, including agency folks from the U.S. Allyse Ferrara had put together a symposium. I went to New Orleans for a conference about gar. I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan. Image Details Can you remember the first time you came across what you might consider a “mega” gar?ĭefinitely.
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