| Dictionary: ale·wife1 |
[Probably alteration (influenced by ALEWIFE2) of obsolete allowes, a type of shad, from French alose, shad, from Old French, from Late Latin alausa.]
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| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: alewife |
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| Animal Encyclopedia: Alewife |
Alosa pseudoharengus
FAMILY
Clupeidae
TAXONOMY
Alosa pseudoharengus Wilson, 1811, Delaware River at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
OTHER COMMON NAMES
English: Bigeye herring, branch herring, freshwater herring, golden shad, grayback, gray herring, green shad, kyack, mulhaden, sawbelly, spring herring, white herring; French: Alose gaspareau, gaspareau, gasparot, gasperot; German: Maifisch; Spanish: Alosa, pinchagua.
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS
Sea-run alewives reach a maximum length of 15 in (38.1 cm); landlocked alewives are typically around 6 in (15.2 cm). Small bodies. Strongly compressed laterally. Silvery bodies with grayish green backs. A row of scutes runs along the ventral edge of the belly. A single black spot is present behind the head.
DISTRIBUTION
Atlantic coast of North America, from the St. Lawrence River and Nova Scotia, Canada, to North Carolina. Numerous translocations of this species have resulted in the establishment of landlocked populations in many inland water bodies, including all of the Great Lakes.
HABITAT
Spends a large portion of its life at sea and migrates into inland freshwater streams for spawning. Landlocked populations live entirely in inland lakes or river systems.
BEHAVIOR
Forms schools in open water. Sea-run alewives migrate from the sea to freshwater streams to spawn. Populations in lakes migrate on a diel basis, moving inshore at night and retreating to deeper offshore waters during the day.
FEEDING ECOLOGY AND DIET
Feeds on zooplankton, primarily copepods, cladocerans, mysids, and ostracods. Inshore adults eat insect larvae as a large part of their diet.
REPRODUCTIVE BIOLOGY
Moves from the sea to rivers for spawning, with the timing of migration dependent on water temperature. In lakes, alewives move onto shallow beaches and into ponds to spawn. Males and females mature at one and two years of age, respectively. Females usually move to the spawning site before males. Groups of 2–3 fish spawn at night over gravel or rocky substrates. Eggs are broadcast by females and fertilized in the water column by males. Immediately after spawning, the eggs sink and adhere to the substrate. Upon hatching, the young remain at the spawning grounds until the late larval stage and then move slowly into deeper water or the sea.
CONSERVATION STATUS
Not listed by the IUCN, but overfishing, pollution, and impassable dams contribute to stock declines.
SIGNIFICANCE TO HUMANS
Harvested commercially and used as fresh, dried, or salted meat, bait for crab or lobsters, and sometimes as animal feed. Also serves as a forage base for other commercial or recreational fish stocks. In lakes, alewives can be a nuisance to humans. They may become so abundant that they clog industrial water intake pipes, and they often die off in massive events related to fluctuations in water temperature and dissolved oxygen.
| WordNet: alewife |
The noun has 2 meanings:
Meaning #1:
flesh of shad-like fish abundant along the Atlantic coast or in coastal streams
Meaning #2:
shad-like food fish that runs rivers to spawn; often salted or smoked; sometimes placed in genus Pomolobus
Synonyms: Alosa pseudoharengus, Pomolobus pseudoharengus
| Wikipedia: Alewife |
| Alewife | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Actinopterygii |
| Order: | Clupeiformes |
| Family: | Clupeidae |
| Subfamily: | Alosinae |
| Genus: | Alosa |
| Subgenus: | (Pomolobus) |
| Species: | A. (P.) pseudoharengus |
| Binomial name | |
| Alosa (Pomolobus) pseudoharengus (Wilson, 1811) |
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The alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) is a species of herring. There are anadromous and landlocked forms. The landlocked form is also called a sawbelly or mooneye (although this latter name is more commonly applied to Hiodon spp.). The front of the body is deep and larger than other fish found in the same waters, and its common name is said to come from comparison with a corpulent female tavernkeeper ("ale-wife").[1] It was also thought to be the wives of the eels that come up the rivers at the same time. In Atlantic Canada it is known as the gaspereau. More locally, in southwestern Nova Scotia it is called a kiack (or kyack).[2] In the Southeast US, when sold and used as bait, the fish is often referred to as "LY". This fish has, in the past, been used as a baitfish for the lobster fishing industry. It is also used for human consumption, usually smoked. It is caught (during its migration up stream) using large dip nets to scoop the fish out of shallow, constricted areas on its migratory streams and rivers. It is one of the "typical" North American shads of the subgenus Pomolobus. (Faria et al. 2006)
Contents |
Alewives are perhaps best known for their invasion of the Great Lakes by using the Welland Canal to bypass Niagara Falls. Alewives colonized the Great Lakes and became abundant mostly in lakes Huron and Michigan. They reached their peak abundance by the 1950s and 1960s. Alewives grew in number unchecked because of the lack of a top predator in the lakes (lake trout were essentially wiped out around the same time by overfishing and the invasion of the Atlantic sea lamprey). For a time, alewives, which often exhibit seasonal die offs, washed up in windrows on the shorelines of the Great Lakes. Their control was the impetus for the introduction of various Pacific Salmon species (first coho, and later the chinook salmon) to act as predators on them. This caused the development of a salmon/alewife fish community, popular with many sport anglers. Alewives, however, have been implicated in the decline of many native Great Lakes species through competition and predation.
Alewife populations have exhibited drastic declines throughout much of their range. There are several threats that have most likely contributed to their decline. These threats include: loss of habitat due to decreased access to spawning areas from the construction of dams and other impediments to migration; habitat degradation; fishing; and increased predation due to recovering striped bass populations.
In response to the declining trend for alewife, the states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and North Carolina have instituted moratoriums on taking and possession.
The alewife is a U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service Species of Concern. Species of Concern are those species about which the U.S. Government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service, has some concerns regarding status and threats, but for which insufficient information is available to indicate a need to list the species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act(ESA).
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Animal Encyclopedia. Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia. Copyright © 2005 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Alewife". Read more |
