There has been a great deal of local and national discussion in the area around the Longnose Gar. Locally, the discussion has centered on the Gar’s December-March mating season, the increased activity during full and new moon, and its preference of water lettuce as a spawning medium on the Ichetucknee. Thanks to Kenneth Sulak for his decades of gar observations and to the other ‘eyes on and in the water;’ Linda Dicker Weseman, Tedd Greenwald, Mary Ellen Flowers, Bill Hawthorne, Lars Anderson, and Margaret Tolbert.
This photo taken by Jennifer Adler at Troy Spring ‘captures the teeth, the steely eye, the white margined fins, and the colored-up spotting that proceeds to increase in darkness and proliferation during the pre-spawning courtship period.”
Nationally the discussion has centered around the observation that today’s gar is “nearly identical structurally to the earliest fossil gars from the Jurassic period about 150 million years ago. ”
Read the original study in Evolution
Listen to the story on Science Friday
Learning about and appreciating the natural world around us is the path to true gratitude.
OSFR President Joanne Tremblay
joanne.tremblay@oursantaferiver.org
“Giving Our River A Voice”
