Project on ‘understudied yet essential’ sucker took birding approach to studying fish

Fish in the sucker family appear to be, well, “suckers” for a specific range of water temperature that triggers spawning migration.
Specifically, an increase in the number of days that waters reach 43.3 degrees is the best predictor of migration timing, a new study by Shedd Aquarium reveals. Aside from behaviors of the “understudied yet essential” sucker, the Shedd’s research also reveals something about people in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan: they are dependable volunteers who “enabled researchers to gather seven years of data on the spawning migrations of suckers,” the Shedd research team emphasized.