Solomon R David

• PhD
• Professor (Assistant) at University of Minnesota

For decades, many freshwater fishes native to North America have been written off as “rough fish” and neglected as inconsequential or even scorned if perceived as inimical to traditional gamefish. Across the continent, the exact species included in this category vary but often include members of the families Lepisosteidae, Amiidae, Hiodontidae, Cat...

Ecomorphology is essential to understanding the evolution and biogeography of species. However, morphological studies that focus on nongame or ‘rough’ fish groups such as Gar (Lepisosteidae), outside of a phylogenetic context, are comparatively rare. Herein, we investigate the effects of sex, size, and location in a river to assess the potential fo...

Multiple studies across a variety of scientific disciplines have shown that the number of times that a paper is shared on Twitter (now called X) is correlated with the number of citations that paper receives. However, these studies were not designed to answer whether tweeting about scientific papers causes an increase in citations, or whether they...

Evolutionary stasis characterizes lineages that seldom speciate and show little phenotypic change over long stretches of geological time. Although lineages that appear to exhibit evolutionary stasis are often called living fossils, no single mechanism is thought responsible for their slow rates of morphological evolution and low species diversity....

Evolutionary stasis characterizes lineages that seldom speciate and show little phenotypic change over long stretches of geological time. Although lineages that appear to exhibit evolutionary stasis are often called living fossils, no single mechanism is thought to be responsible for their slow rates of morphological evolution and low species diver...

Multiple studies across a variety of scientific disciplines have shown that the number of times that a paper is shared on Twitter (now called X) is correlated with the number of citations that paper receives. However, these studies were not designed to answer whether tweeting about scientific papers causes an increase in citations, or whether they...

Ancient, species-poor lineages persistently occur across the Tree of life. These lineages are likely to contain unrecognized species diversity masked by the low rates of morphological evolution that characterize living fossils. Halecomorphi is a lineage of ray-finned fishes that diverged from its closest relatives before 200 Ma and is represented b...

Ancient, species-poor lineages persistently occur across the Tree of Life. These evolutionarily unique lineages are likely to contain unrecognized species diversity masked by the low rates of morphological evolution that characterize living fossils. Halecomorphi is a major clade of ray-finned fishes that diverged from its closest relatives over 200...

Aim Migratory freshwater fishes are those that must access discrete habitats to complete their life cycles. Freshwater fish migrations occur around the world and provide numerous ecosystem services for humans and natural systems; however, many migratory species are in decline globally. A limiting factor to successfully conserve freshwater migratory...

The bowfin ( Amia calva ) is a ray-finned fish that possesses a unique suite of ancestral and derived phenotypes, which are key to understanding vertebrate evolution. The phylogenetic position of bowfin as a representative of neopterygian fishes, its archetypical body plan and its unduplicated and slowly evolving genome make bowfin a central specie...

Stable isotope analysis (SIA) can be a powerful tool for investigating trophic ecology and energy fluxes through an ecosystem. In fishes, muscle tissue is generally preferred for SIA due to its intermediate turnover rate even though sampling muscle is often lethal. Here, we evaluated the feasibility of a fin clip model (FCM) using fin tissue as a n...

Perspectives of white males have overwhelmingly dominated fisheries science and management in the USA. This dynamic is exemplified by bias against “rough fish”—a pejorative ascribing low‐to‐zero value for countless native fishes. One product of this bias is that biologists have ironically worked against conservation of diverse fishes for over a cen...

Production and outmigration of young‐of‐year (YOY) northern pike from natal sites in Lower Green Bay, WI, USA, were documented over three consecutive years (2013–2015). We tested the hypothesis that spawning success and outmigration characteristics of YOY northern pike would vary among natural and anthropogenically modified habitats. Sixteen focal...

The bowfin fish ( Amia calva ) diverged before the genome duplication in teleost fishes, and its archetypical body plan and slow rate of molecular evolution make it a key species for genomic exploration as a basal representative of the neopterygian fishes. To investigate the evolution and development of ray-finned fishes, we generated a chromosome-...

Growing appreciation of biodiversity and the role of apex predators, along with increasing popularity of multispecies and trophy‐oriented angling, has elevated the status of gars – in particular, the Alligator Gar Atractosteus spatula – among anglers and biologists alike. As a result, considerable effort has been spent in recent years to gain a wor...

Modern zoos and aquariums aspire to contribute significantly to biodiversity conservation and research. For example, conservation research is a key accreditation criterion of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). However, no studies to date have quantified this contribution. We assessed the research productivity of 228 AZA members using scie...

Gars (family Lepisosteidae) play important roles as apex predators in freshwater ecosystems, helping to balance fish populations. Several gar species are exploited as food and game fish, and some species are classified as vulnerable due to habitat loss. New molecular techniques to detect, monitor, and identify environmental DNA from gars might help...

Recreational angling for gars (family Lepisosteidae) has become more popular in recent years; however, the fundamental understanding of their population dynamics needed for effective management and conservation is lacking. Age data are essential for describing population dynamic rate functions, but few studies have addressed the selection of ideal...

Gars (family Lepisosteidae) serve important roles as apex predators in freshwater ecosystems., helping to balance fish populations. Several gar species are exploited as food and game fish, and some species are classified as vulnerable due to habitat loss. New molecular techniques to detect, monitor, and identify environmental DNA from gars might he...

The spotted gar (Lepisosteus oculatus) shows a disjunct natural distribution, with a core population extending from the central Mississippi River Basin to the U.S. gulf coast and a peripheral population in the southern Great Lakes Basin. Despite significant conservation concerns for this species in the Great Lakes watersheds where it occurs, few ge...

Recreational angling for gars Lepisosteidae has become more popular in recent years; however, the fundamental understanding of population dynamics needed for effective management and conservation is lacking. Age data are essential for describing population dynamic rate functions, but few studies have addressed selection of ideal calcified structure...

Empirically understanding spatial variation in secondary production rates is central to ecology. Yet for most taxa, such patterns are rarely examined, especially at different levels of ecological organization (e.g., species- vs. community-level patterns). We compiled data on biomass, production, and P/B rates of freshwater fish communities and spec...

Social media has become an established component of many facets of science, including fisheries and conservation ecology. Indeed, platforms like Twitter and Facebook have made the fisheries world a much smaller pond through rapid exchanges of information. Although not a new phenomenon, measuring social media's success as a tool for fish conservatio...

Symposium Opening Remarks & Overview of Holostean ResearchGars (Lepisosteidae) and Bowfin (Amiidae), collectively known as holosteans, are among the most ancient fish lineages native to North American waters. Understudied and historically disliked relative to other North American fisheries, many holostean populations have declined due to habitat lo...

Coregonid fishes serve important ecological and economic roles throughout the Laurentian Great Lakes, both presently and historically. The Lake Whitefish (Coregonus clupeaformis) constitutes the largest commercial fishery in Lake Michigan. The Cisco (Coregonus artedi) was once the largest commercial fishery on multiple Great Lakes before crashing d...

Peripheral populations occupy the edge of a species' range and may exhibit adaptations to potentially “harsher” marginal environments compared with core populations. The peripheral population of Spotted Gar Lepisosteus oculatus in the Great Lakes basin represents the northern edge of the species' range and is completely disjunct from the core Missi...

The Lake Whitefish (Coregonus clupeaformis) constitutes the largest commercial fishery in Lake Michigan, and is an economically and ecologically important species throughout the Great Lakes. River spawning migrations of Lake Whitefish greatly declined in the early 20th century, but have reemerged in the past decade. The primary drivers for reemerge...

A technique for laboratory estimation of net trophic transfer efficiency (γ) of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) congeners to piscivorous fish from their prey is described herein. During a 135-day laboratory experiment, we fed bloater (Coregonus hoyi) that had been caught in Lake Michigan to lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) kept in eight laboratory...

Living fossils and primitive fishes are somewhat antiquated designations given to species that appear to have changed little over geologic time in comparison to their fossil ancestors. Examples of these fishes are the coelacanths (Latimeria spp.), lungfishes (Dipnoi), sturgeons (Acipenseridae), and gars (Lepisosteidae). Unfortunately many of these...

Lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) were fed bloater (Coregonus hoyi) in eight laboratory tanks over a 135-d experiment. At the start of the experiment, four to nine fish in each tank were sacrificed, and the concentrations of 75 polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) congeners within these fish were determined. Polychlorinated biphenyl congener concentratio...

We evaluated the performance of the Wisconsin bioenergetics model for lake trout Salvelinus namaycush that were fed ad libitum in laboratory tanks under regimes of low activity and high activity. In addition, we compared model performance under two different model algorithms: (1) balancing the lake trout energy budget on day t based on lake trout e...

Peripheral populations occupy the edge of a species’ range and are considered to be exceptionally important in terms of a species’ ecology, biogeography, evolution, and conservation. Peripheral populations often persist under different environmental conditions from the species’ central or “core” populations, and may exhibit genetic and morphologica...

We performed two controlled experiments to determine the amount of mass-dependent and mass-independent fractionation (MDF and MIF) of methylmercury (MeHg) during trophic transfer into fish. In experiment 1, juvenile yellow perch (Perca flavescens) were raised in captivity on commercial food pellets and then their diet was either maintained on uname...

Based on a laboratory experiment, we estimated the net trophic transfer efficiency of methylmercury to lake trout Salvelinus namaycush from its prey to be equal to 76.6 %. Under the assumption that gross trophic transfer efficiency of methylmercury to lake trout from its prey was equal to 80 %, we estimated that the rate at which lake trout elimina...

I studied the ecology and biogeography of the Spotted Gar (Lepisosteus oculatus) from core and Great Lakes Region peripheral populations. Peripheral populations occupy the edge of a species’ range and are considered to be important in terms of a species’ ecology, biogeography, evolution, and conservation. Peripheral populations often persist under...

The spotted gar (Lepisosteus oculatus) is one of seven extant members of the family Lepisosteidae and ranges from the southern Great Lakes region to the Gulf Coast. The spotted gar has a disjoint distribution and is more common in the Mississippi River basin than the Great Lakes Region. The Great Lakes basin population (peripheral) is poorly studie...

Population fecundity can vary through time, sometimes owing to changes in adult condition. Consideration of these fecundity changes can improve understanding of recruitment variation. Herein, we estimated fecundity of Lake Michigan bloater Coregonus hoyi during December 2005 and February 2006. Bloater recruitment has been highly variable from 1962...

The Muskegon River is the second largest tributary to Lake Michigan, and supports a diversity of habitats and fish communities of ecological and economic importance. I hypothesized that spatial heterogeneity in physical habitat characteristics of the river was the major factor affecting fish community composition and species densities in the lower...