Animal Diversity Web

Ge­o­graphic Range

The short­nosed gar is found in Mis­sis­sippi River basin from south cen­tral Ohio, north­ern In­di­ana and Wis­con­sin to Mon­tana and south to Al­abama and Louisiana (Page and Burr, 1991). The species is also found in Lake Michi­gan drainage in Wis­con­sin. Short­nose gar pre­sum­ably dis­persed into Wis­con­sin from the Mis­sis­sippi river via the Wis­con­sin and Fox rivers (Priegel, 1963). (Page and Burr, 1991; Priegel, 1963)

• Biogeographic Regions
• nearctic
  • native

Habi­tat

Habi­tat of the short­nosed gar in­cludes lakes, swamps, and the calm pools and back­wa­ters of creeks and rivers. They are com­monly found near veg­e­ta­tion and sub­merged logs. (Page and Burr, 1991)

• Habitat Regions
• temperate

• Aquatic Biomes
• lakes and ponds
• rivers and streams

• Wetlands
• swamp

Phys­i­cal De­scrip­tion

Gar species in North Amer­ica are eas­ily rec­og­nized by their long snouts, sharply toothed jaws, non-over­lap­ping and di­a­mond shaped ganoid scales, and pos­te­rior place­ment of dor­sal and anal fins on the body. Specif­i­cally, the short­nose gar is char­ac­ter­ized by a short (rel­a­tive to other gars), broad snout. The upper jaw is longer then the rest of the head and con­tains only one row of teeth. The short­nose gar has olive or brown col­oration with white on the ven­tral side and black spots on me­dian fins. Paired fins usu­ally lack spots (spots found only on in­di­vid­u­als liv­ing in clear water). Ju­ve­niles have fairly broad dark brown stripes along back and side. (Page and Burr, 1991)

• Other Physical Features
• ectothermic
• bilateral symmetry

• Average mass

  1430 g

  50.40 oz

  AnAge

• Range length

  83 (high) cm

  32.68 (high) in

De­vel­op­ment

Short­nose gars may be smaller than 9-10 mm long when they hatch. Al­though ca­pa­ble of swim­ming, they use an ad­he­sive struc­ture to hang ver­ti­cally by their snout from ob­jects in the water, and they will com­monly at­tach to sur­face film. After ex­haust­ing the yolk sac, the fry be­come more ac­tive and as­sume a hor­i­zon­tal at­ti­tude. The fry usu­ally re­main near area of egg de­po­si­tion (Echelle and Riggs, 1972).

Re­pro­duc­tion

Gars begin to spawn in early to mid April until the end of May (Es­chelle and Burr, 1972). Short­nose gars spawn in shal­low water among the grass and aquatic weeds and pre­fer grassy sloughs as spawn­ing grounds. Their eggs are large, green, and poi­so­nous to warm-blooded ver­te­brates, in­clud­ing hu­mans (Eddy, 1974).

• Key Reproductive Features
• iteroparous
• seasonal breeding
• sexual
• fertilization
  • external
• oviparous

• Breeding season

  early to mid April until the end of May

Short­nose gar do not care for their young.

• Parental Investment
• no parental involvement

Lifes­pan/Longevity

• Average lifespan
  Status: captivity

  20.0 years

  Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

Be­hav­ior

Gars are com­monly ob­served break­ing the sur­face and gulp­ing air to re­place air in the lung, from which they add oxy­gen to the blood­stream (Cross and Collins, 1995; Pfleiger, 1997).

• Key Behaviors
• natatorial
• motile
• solitary

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Per­cep­tion

• Perception Channels
• tactile
• chemical

Food Habits

Young of the year gars con­sume a va­ri­ety of food items, rang­ing from tiny crus­taceans to dif­fer­ent life stages of in­sects and fish. The diet of young gars sug­gests that most feed­ing is sur­face ori­ented. Adult and young of the year gars feed more ac­tively at night than dur­ing the day (Echelle and Riggs, 1972).

Hunt­ing ac­tiv­ity of gars can be de­scribed as stalk­ing rather than ac­tive pur­suit. Gars are typ­i­cally op­por­tunist, con­sum­ing the most avail­able food. Short­nose gar con­sume more in­ver­te­brates than any other species of gar (Vok­oun, 2000).

Gars are ef­fi­cient am­bush preda­tors (Moyle and Cech, 1988). With its long jaws, gars lie in am­bush and catch fish with a side­ways strike (Bone, 1999).

• Primary Diet
• carnivore
  • piscivore
  • insectivore
  • eats non-insect arthropods

• Animal Foods
• fish
• insects
• zooplankton

Pre­da­tion

Due to gars bony com­po­si­tion and tough, in­ter­lock­ing gan­iod scales, gars are nearly im­per­vi­ous to any forms of pre­da­tion. Adult gars have no known preda­tors ex­cept hu­mans. (Iowa Dept of Nat­ural Re­sources, 1987)

• Known Predators

  • humans (Homo sapiens)

Ecosys­tem Roles

The short­nose gar are preda­tors that can oc­cupy the role of a scav­enger, but often com­petes for food with com­mon game­fishes like the north­ern pike, walleyes, and bass. How­ever, they often thrive in wa­ters not suit­able for game fishes (Eddy, 1974).

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Neg­a­tive

Fish­er­men have an aver­sion to the short­nose gar be­cause of their com­pet­i­tive preda­tory habits and lack of value as a sport fish. Often fish­er­men at­tempt to cap­ture them for pur­poses of re­moval. For­tu­nately for the short­nose gar, their slen­der shape and be­hav­ior make them dif­fi­cult to cap­ture in siene nets (Eddy, 1974).

Con­ser­va­tion Sta­tus

Since short­nose gar and other gar species com­pete with pop­u­lar game­fishes, they are re­garded as a nui­sance to many sport fish­er­men. There are some gar fish­ing en­thu­si­asts, but their pop­u­lar­ity as a sport fish is low. Their per­ceived lack of value has prompted many ac­tions to elim­i­nate them from some aquatic areas. A re­lated species, the al­li­ga­tor gar Atrac­tos­teus spat­ula, is under in­tense pres­sure in some parts of the south­ern United States (Eddy, 1974).

• IUCN Red List

  No special status

• US Federal List

  No special status

• CITES

  No special status

Con­trib­u­tors

William Fink (ed­i­tor), Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan-Ann Arbor.

Mark Brad­burn (au­thor), Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan-Ann Arbor.

Ref­er­ences

Bone, Q., N. Mar­shall, J. Blax­ter. 1999. Bi­ol­ogy of Fishes. Chel­tenham, UK: Stan­ley Thornes Ltd..

Cross, F., J. Collins. 1995. Fishes in Kansas. Lawrence, KS: Uni­ver­sity Press of Kansas.

Echelle, A., C. Riggs. 1972. As­pects of the early life his­tory of gars *Lep­isos­teus* in Lake Tex­oma. Trans­ac­tions of the Amer­i­can Fish­eries So­ci­ety, 101(1): 106-112.

Eddy, S., J. Un­der­hill. 1974. North­ern Fishes. Min­neapo­lis, MN: Uni­ver­sity of Min­nesota Press.

Iowa Dept of Nat­ural Re­sources, 1987. "The Gar Fam­ily" (On-line). Ac­cessed 03/02/2006 at http://​www.​iowadnr.​com/​fish/​iafish/​garfamil.​html.

Moyle, P., J. Cech. 1988. Fishes: An In­tro­duc­tion to Ichthy­ol­ogy. En­gel­wood Cliffs, NJ: Pren­tice Hall.

Page, L., B. Burr. 1991. A Field Guide to Fresh­wa­ter Fishes of North Amer­ica North of Mex­ico. The Pe­ter­son Field Guide Se­ries, vol 42. Boston, MA: Houghton Mif­flin Com­pany.

Pflieger, W. 1997. The fishes of Mis­souri. Jef­fer­son City, MO: Mis­souri De­part­ment of Con­ser­va­tion.

Priegel, G. 1963. Dis­per­sal of the Short­nose Gar, *Lep­isos­teus platosto­mus*, into the Great Lakes Drainage. Trans­ac­tions of the Amer­i­can Fish­eries So­ci­ety, 92 (2): 178.

Volk­oun, J. 2002. Short­nose gar (*Lep­iso­teus platosto­mus*) for­ag­ing on pe­ri­od­i­cal ci­cadas (Magi­ci­cada spp.): ter­ri­to­r­ial de­fense of prof­itable pool po­si­tions. Amer­i­can Mid­land Nat­u­ral­ist, 143: 261-265.