Name: Fish eggs can hatch even after being eaten and excreted by ducks
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Fish eggs can hatch even after being eaten and excreted by ducks

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This article was published more than&nbsp;2 years agoCommentGift ShareFor fish eggs, getting gobbled by a duck kicks off a harrowing journey that includes a pummeling in the gizzard and an attack by stomach acids. But a few eggs can , possibly helping to spread those fish, including invasive species, to different places, a new study finds.It’s been an “open question for centuries how these isolated water bodies can be populated by fish,” said fish biologist Patricia Burkhardt-Holm of the University of Basel in Switzerland, who was not involved with the work. This study shows one way that water birds may disperse fish, she said.Birds’ feathers, feet and feces . But since many fish eggs are soft, researchers didn’t expect that they could survive a bird’s gut, says Orsolya Vincze, an evolutionary biologist at the Center for Ecological Research in Debrecen, Hungary.AdvertisementIn the lab, Vincze and her colleagues fed thousands of eggs from two invasive carp species to eight mallard ducks. About 0.2&nbsp;percent of ingested eggs — 18 of 8,000 — were intact after defecation, the team found. Some of those eggs contained wriggling embryos and a few eggs hatched, the team reported June 22 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It’s not clear yet whether eggs survive in this way in the wild.Most of the viable eggs were pooped out within an hour of being eaten, while one took at least four hours to pass. Migratory ducks could travel dozens or possibly hundreds of kilometers before excreting those eggs, the scientists said.Although the surviving egg count is low, their numbers may add up, making bird poop a possibly important vehicle for spreading fish. A single carp can release hundreds of thousands of eggs at a time, Vincze said. And there are huge numbers of mallards and other water birds throughout the world that may gorge themselves on those eggs.—Carolyn Wilke is a staff writer at Science News for Students. She has a PhD in environmental engineering from Northwestern University. CommentsGift ArticleTOP STORIESThe Post’s ViewOpinions from the Washington Post Editorial Board.Try a different topic or to save your preferences

This article was published more than&nbsp;2 years agoCommentGift ShareFor fish eggs, getting gobbled by a duck kicks off a harrowing journey that includes a pummeling in the gizzard and an attack by stomach acids. But a few eggs can , possibly helping to spread those fish, including invasive species, to different places, a new study finds.It’s been an “open question for centuries how these isolated water bodies can be populated by fish,” said fish biologist Patricia Burkhardt-Holm of the University of Basel in Switzerland, who was not involved with the work. This study shows one way that...

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Carolyn Wilke is a staff writer at Science News for Students. She holds a Ph.D. in environmental engineering at Northwestern University, where she studied how light plays into the chemistry and toxicity of different types of nanoparticles under environmental conditions. Her experience as a AAAS Mass Media Fellow at The Sacramento Bee convinced her to leave the lab to write about science instead. Carolyn is a former Science News intern and has also reported on the life sciences for The Scientist. She enjoys writing about materials science, chemistry, microbiology and all things related to the environment.

https://www.sciencenews.org/author/carolyn-wilke

Carolyn Wilke

washingtonpost.com

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Fish eggs can hatch even after being eaten and excreted by ducks

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