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Dispersal of fish eggs by water birds-a myth?


Still Waters

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How do fish end up in isolated bodies of water? For centuries, researchers have assumed that water birds transfer fish eggs into these waters—however, a systematic literature review by researchers at the University of Basel has shown that there is no evidence of this to date.

Small lakes with a surface area of less than 100 m2 represent the majority of global freshwater ecosystems. Many of these lakes are found in remote, often mountainous areas with no inflow and outflow. Yet most of these lakes have fish. So how do fish reach lakes and ponds that are not connected to other bodies of water?

https://phys.org/news/2018-02-dispersal-fish-eggs-birdsjust-myth.html

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1 hour ago, Still Waters said:

How do fish end up in isolated bodies of water? For centuries, researchers have assumed that water birds transfer fish eggs into these waters—however, a systematic literature review by researchers at the University of Basel has shown that there is no evidence of this to date.

Small lakes with a surface area of less than 100 m2 represent the majority of global freshwater ecosystems. Many of these lakes are found in remote, often mountainous areas with no inflow and outflow. Yet most of these lakes have fish. So how do fish reach lakes and ponds that are not connected to other bodies of water?

https://phys.org/news/2018-02-dispersal-fish-eggs-birdsjust-myth.html

Oh, wow. An armchair refutation of the obvious.

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Something I have wondered about myself being a person who visits remote lakes on occasion. 

I figured its more likely the birds eat the eggs and then either expire or deposit them undigested. Either that or its aliens. Probably aliens.

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5 hours ago, BorizBadinov said:

Something I have wondered about myself being a person who visits remote lakes on occasion. 

I figured its more likely the birds eat the eggs and then either expire or deposit them undigested. Either that or its aliens. Probably aliens.

Yeah, it's aliens. 

 

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Many possibilities, including:

- fish can swim upstream.  If you are thinking fast water / rapids.. always remember that near the edges of any stream/river, the water slows to almost zero..

- weather events, eg tornadoes, can suck large amounts of water up, and then deposit it elsewhere

- waterbirds can get eggs trapped in feathers, or possibly even survive their digestive tracts, or drop a fish after traveling

- folks who live there may deliberately stock/restock fish in other lakes

- in some regions, glaciers/ice ages may 'level' the region and then as they slowly melt...

and more..  As you only need this happen once involving one fish of each sex (or a single pregnant fish), given a few millenia...  It's really not the sort of thing that you can easily gather 'evidence' for, and I doubt whether all cases have the same root cause...

Edited by ChrLzs
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There were stickleback and minows in the little ponds made by WWII bombs dropped on my local common. So whatever put them there, must have happened between 1944 and 1980 ish. Thinking about it, it might have been anyone of the generations of kids from the area in between the bombing and my finding one in my net. 

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