GREAT OUTDOORS: Fish scientists rename some local species

Taxonomists, who are scientists who name, describe and classify living or extinct organisms into categories, now have DNA technology to bolster their observations. Fisheries biologists subscribe to one of two camps: splitters or lumpers. It is a tug of war that has been waged for centuries. Splitters are those who use subtle differences in fish to describe new species or create sub-species, but lumpers permit subtle variations in appearances to remain under the umbrella of a single species. As a result of splitters using DNA evidence, many local fish have been reassigned into different families and given new scientific, and/or common names. I can no longer use many of the invalid scientific names of fish species that I memorized in 1974 while taking my first ichthyology class at Northwood High School. Even then, in the copies of Milton B. Trautman's 1953 Fishes of Ohio, which served as our de facto textbook, Roccus, an earlier genus name of white bass and white perch, was crossed out and Morone was written onto their pages. Walleye, formerly Stizostedion vitreum vitreum, is now Sander vitreus due to a better understanding of its genetic relationship with European Zander, Sander lucioperca, a close walleye relative described hundreds of years earlier. Over the past couple of decades, many members of the minnow family, catfish, darters and others have been given new scientific names. A couple prominent changes affecting fish found locally include largemouth bass and bowfin, aka "dogfish." The scientific name of the Florida bass, formerly Micropterus salmoides floridanus, was changed to Micropterus salmoides, previously applied to the northern largemouth bass strain. Northern largemouth bass became Micropterus nigricans. After DNA sequencing, these are now both considered species, not subspecies. Telling them apart requires counting the number of scales along the lateral line, around the base of the tail and more definitively, the number of pyloric caeca, which are finger-like stomach pouches. Bowfin, a prehistoric "living fossil" fish species than have remained unchanged for 100-150 million years, have been split from a single species, Amia calva into two. Amia calva was reassigned to the newly named Ruddy bowfin, found in the mid-Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coastal states. It has a reddish hue, especially noticeable on the fins and lacks the prominent spot near the tail called the ocellus. The more widespread species that commonly occurs in the Great Lakes and Mississippi River drainages is now called the Emerald or Eyetail bowfin, Amia ocellicauda. The dark green cast that is present on both sexes brightens to emerald green, especially vivid on fins of the males during the spring spawning season and their ocellus becomes more pronounced. Colors aside, structural differences include 15 dentary teeth in the Emerald bowfin vs. 16-17 in the Ruddy bowfin. The Emerald bowfin has a smaller lower gill cover bone and a longer body shape. Bowfin are mostly seen in wetlands, vegetated bays and slow-moving rivers and are often mistakenly identified as one of the species of snakehead fish. According to Eric Weimer, supervisor of the Ohio Division of Wildlife's Lake Erie Sandusky Fisheries Research Unit, there are no snakeheads known to exist in Ohio waters. Perch bite on again According to numerous reliable reports from fishermen, charter services and fish cleaning facilities, yellow perch have begun to bite again after water temperatures dropped, causing spiny water flea numbers to decline. While many undersized fish are still present, those that were borderline "keepers" in August are now large enough to fillet. The biggest hurdle that remains is finding a bait shop with minnows to sell.