THE GIZZARD SHAD IN RELATION TO PLANTS 

 AND GAME FISHES 



By L. H. Tiffany 



Ohio State University 

 Columbus, Ohio 



It is the purpose of this preliminary paper to record some 

 observations on the food and feeding habits of the young giz- 

 zard shad (Dorosoma cepedianum Le Sueur), and the place it 

 holds as a connecting link between microscopic plants and the 

 game fishes. This species, often called the hickory shad, is very 

 abundance at Buckeye, Indian, and Loramie Lakes, often more 

 than a thousand of the young being taken at one haul of the 

 collecting seine. It is less common in the other localities 

 covered by the survey in Ohio. 



The fish collected were put into a five per cent solution of 

 formalin, thus preserving the contents of the stomach and intes- 

 tine and preventing further digestive action. The examination 

 of the contents of the digestive tract was made with a com- 

 pound microscope, the highest powers often being necessary 

 for identification of the food. Adult fishes are not considered 

 in this paper, examination being limited to young specimens 

 under seventy millimeters in length, measured from the point 

 of snout to the base of the caudal fin. About two hundred in- 

 dividuals were studied from the localities named above. 



Since the excellent work of Forbes* nearly forty years ago, 

 very little study appears to have been made of the food of the 

 gizzard shad. According to Forbes the shad is "a mud lover 

 par excellence" ; swallows "large quantities of fine mud con- 

 taining about twenty per cent of minutely divided vegetable 

 debris"; and consumes, when young, food that is approxi- 

 mately 90 per cent microscopic animals and the rest microscopic 

 plants. From data at hand it appears that these statements 



•On the food relations of freshwater fishes: a summary and dicussion. S. A. 

 Forbes. Bulletin, Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History, Vol. II, Art. 8, 1888. 



