AvalancheDave
Member
After many fruitless searches, I finally found evidence to confirm/deny this:
I agree. But the growth inhibiting factors being discussed in the article are to show that those other things you just listed are not the primary and only cause.AvalancheDave said:I haven't read enough to know if it's in fact a hormone so I really should have stuck with "growth inhibition factors" (the term used in the paper).
There's still plenty of other potential causes of growth inhibition (dominance, diet, and many, many types of parasites) to worry about.
On a purely technical level, hormones communicate between systems within an organism, a pheromone is a form of chemical communication across organisms. The inability to distinguish between the two is one of the reasons I'm often skeptical of arguments for chemical based stunting. It's like when you hear someone talk about what the data says, that person ain't no scientist.AvalancheDave said:What happened with past searches is that I'd put in something like "growth inhibiting hormone fish" and get a bunch of papers on hormones inside fish that regulate growth.
Today, I tried that and then wised up and searched for "growth inhibiting hormone fish conspecifics."