Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center

Bob Hrabik supervises the Missouri Department of Conservation’s Open Rivers and Wetlands Field Station (ORWFS) located in Jackson, Missouri. Mr. Hrabik has supervised the field station since its inception in January 1991. The field station has grown considerably under his tenure and is now a member of two families of field stations as part of the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program (LTRMP) and the Missouri Department of Conservation, Resource Science Division. 

Mr. Hrabik earned a Masters of Natural Science degree from Southeast Missouri State University (thesis: Meristic and Morphometric Variation in Populations of Notropis volucellus and Notropis wickliffi in the Upper Mississippi River Basin), and a B.S. degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

His career began in 1984 with the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission (NGPC) and the University of Nebraska State Museum (UNSM).  Using a grant from the Institute of Museum Services, Hrabik was first to catalog the fish collection at UNSM. While at the NGPC, Hrabik collected and photographed fishes for a special publication on Nebraska fishes (The Fish Book. 1987. Nebraskaland Magazine 65(1)), wrote two articles, and assisted in publication layout. Hrabik has maintained strong ties to the University of Nebraska and the NGPC and is currently coauthoring A Field Guide to the Fishes of Nebraska to be published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2010.

Hrabik joined the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) in 1986 and was stationed near Hannibal, where he extensively surveyed stream fishes in northeastern Missouri as part of the then fledging streams program. He was promoted to Fisheries Management Biologist in 1989 and transferred to Kirksville. It was in 1991 that Hrabik assumed his current role as Supervisor of the then newly created Open River Field Station in Cape Girardeau.

As part of the LTRMP, Hrabik serves on the Analysis Team and has been involved in several ad-hoc committees and workgroups.  He is the LTRMP’s expert fish taxonomist and is a member of the scientific team working with Chinese counterparts on the Yangtze River, both visiting China in 2008 and hosting Chinese scientists in Missouri in 2009 as part of the on-going exchange. For MDC, Hrabik serves on the Resource Science Division DMT (Division Management Team) helping to set priorities and policy for the Division and the Department, and he has also been involved in various ad-hoc committees and workgroups within the agency. He was recently awarded adjunct faculty status at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale.

Hrabik’s professional interests include fish taxonomy, systematics, zoogeography, lotic ecology, and theory into improving estimation of species richness and abundance of stream fishes. He has initiated a major undertaking in Missouri to create the state’s first aquatic systematics research collections in conjunction with the Bollinger County Museum of Natural History and is working with the Missouri Academy of Sciences to catalog and link into a relational database, biological collections in the state of Missouri.

Selected publications:

Hrabik, R.A. 1989. Fishes. Pages 143-154 in A. Bleed and C. Flowerday, editors:  An atlas the Sand Hills. Resource Atlas Number 5/1989.  Conservation and Survey Division. Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Hrabik, R.A. 1992.  Fox River Basin Plan.  Missouri Department of Conservation, Jefferson City. Reprinted by the National Biological Service, Environmental Management Technical Center, Onalaska, Wisconsin, June 1994.  LTRMP 94‑R008.  76 pp.

Hrabik, R.A. 1996. A new distributional record of Notropis topeka (Teleostei: Cypriniformes) from the Mississippi River drainage in Missouri. Transactions of the Missouri Academy of Science 30: 1-5. Reprinted by the U. S. Geological Survey, Environmental Management Technical Center, Onalaska, Wisconsin, November 1997.  LTRMP 97-R023.  5 pp.

Hrabik, R.A. 1997. Distributional status of uncommon fishes and an amphibian from northeastern Missouri.  Prairie Naturalist 29(3): 151-169.

Hrabik, R.A. 2002. The art of seining (and the joy of keeping native fish).  Missouri Conservationist 63(1): 24-27.

Barko, V. A. and R. A. Hrabik. 2004. Ecology of Ohio Shrimp (Macrobrachium ohione) and Glass Shrimp (Palaemonetes kadiakensis) in the unimpounded Upper Mississippi River.  American Midland Naturalist 151(2) 265-273.

Herzog, D. P., V. A. Barko, J. S. Scheibe, R. A. Hrabik, and D. E. Ostendorf. 2005.  Efficacy of a benthic trawl for sampling small-bodied fishes in large river systems. North American Journal of Fisheries Management 25(2): 594-603.

Hrabik, R. A., D. P. Herzog, D. E. Ostendorf, and M. D. Petersen. 2007.  Larvae provide first evidence of successful reproduction by pallid sturgeon, Scaphirhynchus albus, in the Mississippi River.  Journal of Applied Ichthyology 23(2007): 436-443.

Herzog, D. P., D. E. Ostendorf, R. A. Hrabik, and V. A. Barko. 2009. The mini-Missouri trawl: a useful methodology for sampling small-bodied fishes in small and large river systems.  Journal of Freshwater Ecology 24(1): 103-108.

Robert Hrabik
ext. 21
Missouri Department of Conservation
LTRMP Open River Field Station
3815 East Jackson Boulevard
Jackson, Missouri 63755
Phone: 573-243-2659 ext. 1041
Fax: 573-243-2897