What eats the eggs, if nothing guards them?

Less than you would think, and that is the design. The swollen jelly matrix is genuinely unpalatable — most fish that sample a ribbon spit it out — so routine egg predation by minnows and sunfish, the plague of every bass nest, largely bounces off. The real killers are physical and thermal: ribbons torn loose and stranded by wind and waves, silt smothering them, and cold snaps stalling development until fungus wins. Crayfish and some invertebrates will work on damaged ribbons, and a few predators tolerate the jelly, but weather beats predation as the reason year classes fail. The undefended egg mass is better defended than it looks.

Browse every question