I haven’t gone fishing much, and I admit putting a worm on a hook and reeling in a wiggling finned creature isn’t my idea of fun. However, I love fish and their place in the ecosystem, and recently learned about a small, beautiful one called pumpkinseed and its fascinating life cycle.
We were documenting dragonflies and damselflies at Lake Defiance in Moraine Hills State Park. Dragonflies are strong flyers. The smaller daintier damselflies can’t fly as well and stay close to shallow waters. To find the damsels, you have to look down, and that’s when you notice there’s a lot of nature going on beneath the water’s surface. Frogs, of course, will stick their heads out, as one did while we were there, then hop out of view.
But there’s also phytoplankton and zooplankton — microscopic plants and animals living in the water. These include mosquito larvae, which pumpkinseeds eat. Searching for damselflies, we noticed about 12 pumpkinseed fish stationed above their nests beneath the water at the shallow edge of the lake.
This is a beautiful fish, much more colorful and brighter overall than its close cousin, the bluegill, which anglers love. Pumpkinseeds can be 4 to 12 inches long, and are vibrant, almost reflecting the sunshine. The overall color is olive-brown, with wavy bright blue-green lines over much of the body, especially about the head.
They also have bright patches of reddish-brown or orange on both sides. A black dot on the ear flap makes this and other related sunfishes appear larger to potential predators. The pumpkinseed also has a bright red mark next to the black dot, adding to its beauty. It gets its name from its shape, resembling a pumpkinseed, and is sometimes called sun perch.
There were 12 to 15 circular nests easily visible within about a 10-by-15-foot area next to the shore, with each one being guarded by a male pumpkinseed swimming in place in the middle of each nest.
Male pumpkinseeds fan their fins to create saucer-shaped depressions above pebbles in the sand, forming the nests where the eggs are laid. They also use their mouths to remove debris and unwanted larger pebbles from their nests. When the nests are done, males entice females to join them.
We watched two pumpkinseeds underwater rubbing bellies, likely the male and female, laying and fertilizing eggs.
Remarkably, a female pumpkinseed may release between 1,500 and 7,000 eggs in one nesting season. Her work over, she leaves while the males remain to defend the nests. A few days later, the microscopic eggs hatch into tiny, transparent fish.
The males guard the young for another 10 days, even bringing them back to the nest in their mouths if they stray too far. Once the young are on their own, males return to tidy up the nest and begin wooing females again.
That’s a lot of crazy stuff happening beneath the water.
Pumpkinseeds eat small aquatic invertebrates, insects such as crickets and grasshoppers, minnows and other small fish, snails, worms, mollusks, pieces of vegetation and mosquito larvae, lots of them, which should make humans happy. They have blunt teeth on pads along their powerful jaws, and a few large, molar-like teeth in the back of their mouths, which help them crush snail shells to eat the animal’s flesh.
Larger fish, as well as herons and other birds, eat the pumpkinseeds. We have often seen a great egret standing in the lake’s shallows peering in to find a meal, perhaps a pumpkinseed or two.
Indigenous peoples and European settlers easily found these fish close to shore, caught them and ate them. Anglers say they taste good, are low in fat and high in protein, but it takes a lot of pumpkinseeds to feed a family, so they’re not prized as much as the larger fish.
Pumpkinseeds are native to eastern North America, but have been introduced to western U.S. and Europe, where they have become invasive. This fact made me remember that introducing non-native species to new lands happens all over the world. We have invasive starlings here, brought over from Europe, but England has invasive pumpkinseeds brought over from America.
When we returned to do another dragonfly survey, we found the pumpkinseed nursery destroyed, likely by a kayaker, canoeist or other boater dragging a vessel into the water. It was a stunning reminder of how much humans do to affect the natural world without even knowing it.
Though there are plenty of pumpkinseeds left in the wild, I did mourn the loss of these colorful creatures beneath the water. I was happy to hear from an Illinois Department of Natural Resources employee that there was at least one other place along the lake where he’s seen pumpkinseed fish spawning at their nests in the pebble-covered shallows near the shore.
As purple martins called overhead, a female common pondhawk dragonfly curved her abdomen and dropped eggs into vegetation in the water as the male hovered above. For a moment, all was right, at least in this one tiny corner of the world.
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Sheryl DeVore has worked as a full-time and freelance reporter, editor and photographer for the baiduhai and its subsidiaries. She’s the author of several books on nature and the environment. Send story ideas and thoughts to [email protected].