What We Do
Conservation Physiology - Understanding physiological requirements of native species and how environmental factors influence spawning, early life stage development, and population dynamics. | Nutrition and Diet Development - Developing diets to provide optimal nutrition for fish and support feed manufacturing by providing scientific basis for feed ingredients. |
Fish passage and screening - Investigate questions on habitat connectivity for aquatic species, focusing on swimming abilities of native fishes of the Northern Rockies and Upper Great Plains. Fish passage is the ability of fish or other aquatic species to move freely throughout their life to find food, reproduce, and complete their natural migration cycles. Millions of barriers to fish passage across the country are fragmenting habitat and leading to species declines. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's National Fish Passage Program is working to reconnect watersheds to benefit both wildlife and people. Learn more about fish passage and screening experiments. Flow capabilities ranging from 100 GPM to 4,000 GPM. | Sensitive Aquatic Species Conservation - Investigate questions associated with conservation of listed or other species of special concern to provide information and tools for improved resource management. |
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Our Projects and Research
Conservation Physiology and Ecology
The Research Program in Conservation Physiology and Ecology at the Bozeman Fish Technology Center focuses on understanding the physiological requirements and tolerances of threatened and endangered species. Technology Center researchers are working to determine the relative importance of environmental factors and the magnitude of change of key environmental factors required to elicit spawning and early life stage development as well as bottlenecks to recruitment failure. Less-invasive or non-invasive tools, such as measurement of plasma sex steroid and ultrasound, are used to assess sex and stage of maturity and spawning readiness in both wild and captive populations of threatened and endangered species to determine reproductive indices, i.e. age and size at sexual differentiation and maturity or the reproductive structure structure
Something temporarily or permanently constructed, built, or placed; and constructed of natural or manufactured parts including, but not limited to, a building, shed, cabin, porch, bridge, walkway, stair steps, sign, landing, platform, dock, rack, fence, telecommunication device, antennae, fish cleaning table, satellite dish/mount, or well head.
Learn more about structure of populations.
Fish Passage and Screening
The Research Program in Fish Passage and Screening at the Bozeman Fish Technology Center (BFTC) is a long-term, multi-agency partnership between the Montana State University Ecology Department, MSU-Western Transport Institute, and the BFTC to address fish passage fish passage
Fish passage is the ability of fish or other aquatic species to move freely throughout their life to find food, reproduce, and complete their natural migration cycles. Millions of barriers to fish passage across the country are fragmenting habitat and leading to species declines. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's National Fish Passage Program is working to reconnect watersheds to benefit both wildlife and people.
Learn more about fish passage informational needs in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain Region. Fish swimming and passage studies are performed using state of the art equipment and methods. Swimming abilities are determined using open channel flume experiments and Loligo swimming tube chambers. The hydraulic environment is characterized and measured in both 1-D and 3-D to aid in developing swimming performance curves. The results can be used to assess barriers, prioritize removals, and design fish passageways to restore connectivity for fish species.
Nutrition and Diet Development
The Research Program in Fish Nutrition and Diet Development is a cooperative effort, Agricultural Research Service Trout-Grains Program. Recent work includes development of plant-based fish feeds to reduce reliance on ocean forage fish for fish feed protein. A one-of-a-kind nutrition laboratory onsite allows for the manufacturing of experimental larval, fingerling, and broodstock broodstock
The reproductively mature adults in a population that breed (or spawn) and produce more individuals (offspring or progeny).
Learn more about broodstock fish feeds and the testing of many kinds of ingredients to improve fish performance and quality. This program also develops specialized diets for use in captive rearing of endangered fish species like woundfin, razorback sucker, June sucker and Rio-Grande silvery minnow.
Sensitive Aquatic Species Conservation
The Research Program in Sensitive Aquatic Species Conservation focuses on restoration efforts for threatened, endangered, and other native species of special concern. Currently, the Bozeman Fish Technology Center imports fish into the facility and/or maintains captive populations of woundfin, pallid sturgeon, shovelnose sturgeon, cutthroat trout, and arctic grayling.