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66 <br />original habitat in backwaters and channels of turbid, unpredictable, <br />desert rivers and the time of year when their eggs hatch. Larvae <br />appear mostly in February and March in Lake Mohave. under natural <br />conditions in the pristine Colorado River system, this timing would <br />have corresponded to later parts of a long period of low flow in <br />summer, autumn, and winter (Turner and Rarpiscak 1980), and may have <br />been a time of relatively high potential food supply in sandy- <br />bott?d, plankton poor habitats. Snowmelt typically resulted in <br />maximum yearly discharge in the Colorado mainstream during May and <br />June, during which time backwaters and channels would be flooded and <br />reshaped. The juvenile razorbacks, at this time 40 mm TL, or larger, <br />may have used backwater habitats or moved into smaller rivers and <br />creeks, or downstream to wider, slower-flowing areas. <br />Unlike survival, rates of growth of razorback sucker larvae in <br />high- and medium-treatment ponds were significantly greater than in <br />unfertilized ponds (Fig. 6). Nonetheless, larvae larger than 12.0 mm <br />TL from all ponds consistently had about 100 organisms in their <br />digestive tracts, apparently maintaltli.Tlg a near maximum fullness with <br />no significant increase in numbers of items eaten by shifting to <br />larger foods with growth (Fig. 8). Assuming 100% success, an <br />individual larva would have been required to search only 4.2 or 2.3 <br />_ i <br />41100 organisms in medium- and high-treatment ponds, respectively. <br />Two or three times that water volume, 8.0 1+1100 food items, and thus <br />more effort, would have been required in an unfertilized pond, so the <br />