SHORTNOSE SUCKER

Doug Markle

Latin name: Chasmistes brevirostris

The Shortnose Sucker is an endangered, endemic, Klamath Basin species which has experienced decades of poor recruitment. Work on early life history with a large team of students and research assistants has helped clarify various threats to recovery. We examined the process of larval out-migration of endangered Lost River suckers and shortnose suckers from spawning grounds in the Williamson and Sprague rivers to rearing grounds in Upper Klamath Lake. Through research, suggestions that river engineering, the removal of debris of the lower Williamson River, and severance of river-floodplain connectivity by levee construction have negatively affected larval suckers by slowing the out-migration process or eliminating preferred habitats were not supported. 

Did you know? Shortnose suckers are not genetically distinct from another sucker "species".

Publications:

Research Paper

Dowling, T. E., D. F. Markle, G. J. Tranah, E. W. Carson, D. W. Wagman, A. T. Kelsen, and B. May. 2016. Introgressive hybridization and the evolution of lake-adapted catostomid fishes. PLoS ONE 11(3): e0149884.doi:10.1371/ journal.pone.0149884