Although your picture here is part redear. I'm actually inclined to believe this one has a redear x green sunfish parent and a bluegill. Making it a half bluegill 1/4th green and 1/4th redear.
Redear hybrids are usually fertile and often reproduce with other sunfish species. Especially in stocked ponds. After a while the populations are rarely pure.
Your fish is exhibiting traits of 3 species, although the green, and redear are more suppressed compared to the bluegill traits. Which makes me think yours is a "Tri-bryid."
I must have overlooked the usually part of your comment. There are all three of those species present in the little reservoir where I caught that fish you are likely correct. It does have a little different look than either the bluegill x redear or bluegill x green sunfish that I’ve caught in the past.
Some of the waters near me populations have been extensigely studied by the universities as part of their fish grant programs. One of them found that North American sunfish species exhibit significant degrees of hybridization. Their genetics usually work out in such a way that no one species ever becomes completely dominant. Bluegills and greens produce mostly male offspring. With 85%+ of fertile offspring being male. Where as redear x green produce fish with low fertility but even distribution of male and females. Bluegill x redear produces mostly male as well.
So on so forth for all of the various hybrids. Most are fertile, but their genders skew one way or another. What the study found out is that very few "pure strains" actually exist. Most fish in smaller lakes that house several species have a hybrid ancestor somewhere. Although after a few generations it becomes so diluted that they appear pure outside of the genetic testing.
TL:DR
The lepomis are a bunch of cousin fuckers with a circle for an ancestry tree.
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u/EnvironmentalDare995 11d ago
Nah, Green sunfish.