Airmail Biodiversity

Dateline Aberdeen, S.D. (1886) -- Small fish found on the roofs of office buildings after a hard rain. And, in 1921 Gulf of Mexico water spout drops 30-50 menhaden 2-3 inches long on boat.

Dateline Fort Lauderdale, Florida (September, 1995) -- a loggerhead turtle fell from the sky and hit a white Chevy Nova that was in progress at the time. A gull was blamed in this case. (Shepherd, 1995)

Fish falls typically leave a piscatory fingerling-print on the landscape that is long and narrow and 100s of feet to miles in length(CED.)

These news items should be put in your gray-matter files for the North Temperate Lakes LTER problem of getting fish in to lakes with neither inflow or outflow streams. One working hypothesis is that tornadoes are to blame. On crossing one lake the tornado could do a lift of piscatory and non-piscatory biota from the lake and dump its load in another lake. The test of this hypothesis that is under consideration is that species are more likely to be in the lake adjacent and in the direction of the tornado tracks and less likely to be in the lakes in a direction normal to the track of the tornadoes. NTL nekton netters already know the species composition of many of their lakes and are itching for new neckton netting outings in NTL territory. The tracks of Wisconsin tornadoes are published and they do have a preferential SW to NE orientation. Wisconsin's Barneveld destroying tornado of the early 1980s took such a track. If a nekton netting, bucky-badger-type student can be found this project may get off the ground.

Gudger, E.W. 1929. More Rains of Fishes. Annals and Magazine of Natural History 10:3:1

Sheperd, C. 1995. News of the Weird. Syndicated Column [Nov. 14-20, 1995].