Sex, Size, and Gonad Morphology of Silver American Eels Anguilla rostrata

Abstract

spawns in the southern Sargasso Sea (Avise et al., 1986; McCleave et al., 1987). Also remarkable is that the vast majority of specimens examined to date, from freshwater and estuarine habitats ranging from Greenland to Florida and Bermuda, have been females (Table 1). The only exceptions found in studies that used histology to identify sex are from Georgia freshwaters, with 91% males (Facey and Helfman, 1985), and the Savannah River estuary in Georgia, with 58% males (Helfman et al., 1987). Males also predominated in a New Brunswick lake (84% males; Vladykov, 1966) and in most freshwater and estuarine habitats in Rhode Is-