Bigmouth Shiner

Diet and feeding

The FishTraits compilation records these diet categories for this species: algae or phytoplankton; detritus or unidentified plant material; invertebrates or larval fish. These are broad categories, not a claim that every individual consumes every example in a category.

Reported feeding positions include bottom feeding and surface or water-column feeding. The compilation combines published observations; diets can vary with age, locality, and available food.

Habitat preferences

Reported habitat associations include streams and small rivers, creeks.

The source records associations with clay or silt, sand, gravel. An association indicates reported use, rather than an exclusive requirement.

Reproduction and parental care

The compilation reports a representative maturity age of 1.5 years. Its maturity field summarizes mean, median, or modal estimates, usually for females; male estimates can be used when female data are unavailable. It is not a fixed age at which every fish first breeds.

Batch or serial spawning has been reported somewhere in the species’ range. This does not establish the same spawning pattern for every population.

Recorded spawning months are May, Jun, Jul, Aug for the source’s reporting region (WI). This is a regional calendar, not a range-wide schedule.

The reproductive-guild classification includes spawning on open substrates without guarding the brood.

Size and recorded longevity

FishTraits reports a maximum total length of 8 centimetres. Some entries use an estimated asymptotic length; this value should not be treated as a certified record catch.

Recorded longevity in the compilation is 3.5 years. Wild observations were preferred, but captive records were accepted where wild records were unavailable, and unspecified records were assumed wild. The value is not a guaranteed wild lifespan or an aquarium life expectancy.

Native range

Great Lakes, Hudson Bay (Red River), and Mississippi River basins from northern Michigan to southern Manitoba, and from eastern Illinois to the Platte River system, eastern Wyoming and northern Colorado; disjunct populations in western New York and Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia, northern Ohio, and western Michigan (Page and Burr 1991). Notropis d. piptolepis is native to the Platte River system in Wyoming and Colorado; N. d. keimi is native to Lake America and Allegheny River drainages in New York and Pennsylvania; and N. d. dorsalis is throughout the rest of the range (Page and Burr 1991).

Introduction history

Means of introduction into the Arkansas River is not known with certainty, may have been natural or the result of an introduction. Miller (1983) hypothesized that the population found in Monument Creek (Arkansas River drainage) in Colorado may have resulted by way of a bait-bucket transfer from the range of the western subspecies. Becker (1983) speculated that the introduction into the upper Wolf River of Wisconsin was likely due to a bait release since it is unlikely that this minnow could move over the dam at Shawano. He also concluded that recent collections in the Root and Pike river systems are more likely to have resulted from bait bucket releases than by fish crossing the low divide between the headwaters of the Root and Des Plaines rivers. Becker also made reference to the possible passage of this species into the Fox-Wolf system through the connection at Portage. The author was apparently making reference to the Wisconsin-Fox Canal which connects the Wisconsin River to the Lake Michigan drainage, although he apparently did not rule out an earlier, natural connection, that may have existed.