Jay T. Hatch

Associate Professor, General College
Associate Curator of Ichthyology, James Ford Bell Museum of Natural History
Phone: 612-625-9346
Email: hatch001@umn.edu
Ph.D. University of Minnesota

Fields of Interest

Distribution and ecology of nongame fishes, conservation of native freshwater fishes, larval fish interactions

Research

My research interests cut a wide swath across the natural history, ecology, and conservation of freshwater fishes native to North America. For most of this century, we have witnessed a shrinking distribution and abundance of many inland fish populations. My most recent research seeks to document historical changes in fish communities and search for potential causal correlates. The springboard for this research is a recently developed statewide fish database that includes data from 1877 to the present. Over the past twenty years, I have conducted a variety of studies aimed at clarifying the critical events in freshwater fish life cycles that influence their growth and survival and may place them at risk from various human impacts. I am especially interested in the interactions between larval drift/movements and ontogenetic changes in food and feeding and how these interactions affect first-year growth and survival. I also examine how differences in life cycle parameters such as size and age at maturity, longevity, and age-specific mortality correlate with habitat and distribution of a species. Recently, I have been working with protected species of Midwestern darters and minnows and developing low-impact techniques for collecting life cycle data.

Selected Publications

  • Hatch, J.T., K.P. Schmidt, D.P. Siems, J.C. Underhill, R.A. Bellig, and R.A. Baker. 2003. A new distributional checklist of Minnesota fishes, with comments on historical occurrence. Journal of the Minnesota Academy of Science 67:1-17.
  • Hatch, J.T. and E.E. Elias. 2002. Ovarian cycling, clutch characteristics and oocyte size of the river shiner Notropis blennius (Girard) in the Upper Mississippi River. Journal of Freshwater Ecology 17(1):85-92.
  • Hatch, J.T. and S. Besaw. 2001. Food use in Minnesota populations of the Topeka shiner (Notropis topeka). Journal of Freshwater Ecology 16(2):229-233.
  • Hatch, J. T.  2001. What we know about Minnesota's first endangered fish species: the Topeka shiner. Journal of the Minnesota Academy of Science 65(1):31-38.
  • Hatch, J. T. 1997. Resource utilization and life history of the crystal darter, Crystallaria asprella (Jordan), in the Lower Mississippi River, Minnesota. Minnesota Natural Heritage and Nongame Wildlife Research Technical Report: 1-22.