Wildlife Watching Wednesday: The Multi-Colored Striped Shiner

By: Tom Berg

Minnows are interesting fish that most people never think about. When people do think of minnows, they usually think about them as being used as bait to catch bigger fish. Although many tiny fish are often lumped into the “minnow” category, minnows can generally be described as any of the various species of fish in the shiner, chub, topminnow, and of course, the minnow families.

One species of shiner, for example, is the beautiful Striped Shiner (Luxilus chrysocephalus). Striped Shiners are a thick-bodied minnow that inhabits small streams with bottoms made primarily of sand and gravel. Their scales are usually silver in color. However, like many minnows, during the spawning season (usually late April and early May in Indiana) striped shiners become very colorful with hues of pink, orange, gold and bluish-green being very common. They also develop bumpy breeding tubercles on their heads.

During the spring breeding season, striped shiners often share the spawning nests of hornyhead chubs, creek chubs and other chubs. These other chub species gather small peddles with their mouths and use them to create nests resembling gravel mounds where they lay their eggs.

Striped shiners need clean, flowing streams with relatively warm water. Deeper pools hold the larger individuals. They can be found throughout the Great Lakes (except for Lake Superior) and Mississippi River basins, all the way south to the Gulf of Mexico through states like Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas. They are closely related to the Common Shiner (Luxilus cornutus), but the common shiner lives farther north and can tolerate much muddier waters.

Striped shiners can get up to nine inches long as adults, which is fairly large for a minnow. They eat a wide variety of organisms, including worms, tiny crustaceans, aquatic midges, dragonfly larvae, mayflies, caddisflies and other aquatic larvae. They even eat algae and other aquatic plants from the creek’s rocky bottom. They, in turn, are eaten by larger fish and by birds like great blue herons, belted kingfishers and others.

The striped shiner is just another small but beautiful player in the natural world, where all things are connected.

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