“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy; Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high...”
The opening lyrics to the popular song “Summertime,” - or most of them anyway - aptly highlight a special summer BrownBagger planned at the USDA-ARS Northern Plains Agricultural Research Lab this coming Thursday, July 17th. While the cotton may not be high, the fish ARE jumping in the nearby Missouri and Yellowstone rivers, where many are the focus of a new study looking at changing “food webs” and their impacts on native fish species, such as pallid and shovelnose sturgeon.
Brittany Trushel, a doctoral student in Montana State University’s Ecology Department, is helping to lead the study and will give the BrownBagger presentation entitled “Competition in native fishes of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers, with focus on species of special concern.”
Her talk is open to the public and runs from noon to 1 pm Thursday at the Sidney ARS Lab, located at 1500 N. Central Avenue. Bring your lunch, treats are provided.
Trushel, fellow MSU doctoral candidate Eric Scholl, and their crew have spent the past two summers on the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers in the MonDak area studying native fish populations and the many factors affecting their numbers and persistence.
“With habitat modification, native fish species are in decline in the Missouri River,” Trushel notes. “Exploring food webs within this river system will help determine if there are enough prey resources to support current fish populations in these rivers, which will, in turn, help guide recovery and management efforts in this complex system.”
Please join us for this intriguing peek into the biology and ecology of the native fish species inhabiting Richland County’s two famous rivers. For more information, contact Beth Redlin at 406-433-9427.
And, for those unable to attend Thursday’s presentation, Trushel and Scholl are also scheduled to speak at the MonDak Heritage Center this coming September.
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