GOING IN CROWDS

     Mummichogs are a kind of minnow-like killifish that lives permanently in brackish creeks and channels of salt marshes and sheltered shoals of estuary shorelines a bit inland from the Atlantic coastline from Maine to Florida.  Their common name is a Native American word that means "going in crowds", because of their dense schooling habit.  They reach sexual maturity in their first year and live about three years.      

     Mummichogs are a bit stout, though still stream-lined to swim in currents, and about six inches long.  Males are olive-green, with vertical silver stripes on their flanks, yellow on their fins and bellies, and blue and orange markings during warmer months, when they spawn.  Females are brownish-green, with dusky, vertical striping, which camouflages those egg-layers.

     These are hardy, little fish, able to thrive in rapidly-changing conditions.  They tolerate radical fluctuations in temperatures, salinity, and oxygen in the water.  They even pass back and forth between fresh water and salt water.  And they can tolerate low oxygen percentages and high pollution levels.  They even take oxygen from the air directly for a while, when forced to. 

     Mummichogs are omnivorous little fish, another trait that helps in their survival and abundance because they should never run out of food.  They consume algae and other kinds of water plants, aquatic worms, insects and other invertebrates, including mosquito larvae, small mollusks and crustaceans, little fish and fish eggs.

     In turn, many mummichogs are ingested by large fish, herons and egrets, a variety of terns and gulls, belted kingfishers and other fish-eating creatures.  Bald eagles and ospreys eat some of the larger fish that consumed mummichogs.  Many schools of mummichogs hide under mats of aquatic vegetation to avoid being eaten.  

     Mummichogs in the southern United States spawn up to eight times a year, each female laying hundreds of eggs every time.  Each female lays her eggs OUT OF WATER, at a line where the tide is highest.  The eggs stick to plants, rocks, mollusk shells, sand and mud along the highest tide line.  The embryos develop in moist air!  And they hatch during the next highest tide, about a month later.  They hatch when there is a lack of oxygen in still water.  These really are unusually hardy, adaptable fish that should have a good future, even amidst the works of people.  

     During winter, mummichogs in the north bury themselves in bottom mud up to eight inches deep.  There they wait out the cold until spring when it's time to spawn again.  

     Mummichogs are admirable little creatures of coastal saltmarsh creeks and channels.  And they are easily noticed because they are always "going in crowds".

     

     

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