stonerollerFaculty from UW-SP (Justin Sipiorski, Bob Bell), UW-SP undergraduate student Blair Hill and Joshua Weid (Wisconsin DNR) are examining the gut contents from Stonerollers  collected from the Plover River dating back to 1967 and preserved in the Becker Memorial Ichthyologic Collection to determine if changes in the diatom community have changed in the Plover River due to variations in land use and environmental change over the last 45 years and to determine if using gut content of archived fish is a valid source for use in paleo context.

staurosira

SEM of diatoms found in the guts of preserved stonerollers. Photo courtesy of Blair Hill.