Shovelnose sturgeon sampled from Illinois River

Havana, Ill. — A crew of four from the Illinois River Biological Station spent much of May chasing and sampling shovelnose sturgeon on the state’s river system.

According tot he IRBS, an abundance of spring rain caused complications, but several shovelnose were captured and analyzed.

“The goal of this project is to better understand the population structure and ecology of these fish, including how fast they grow, how old they are, how many of them are in the population,” the IRBS explained. “We also want to know how related they are to populations in other nearby rivers, how much they move around the river, and where they hang out at different times of year.”

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In Illinois, the shovelnose sturgeon, which lives on gravel and sand bottoms in the open channels of large rivers, dines on insect larvae – particularly flies and caddisflies – using its flexible sucking mouth to pull the edibles in. It has four fringed barbels on its chin near its sucking-type mouth.