Publications
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The Laurentian Great Lakes: A case study in ecological disturbance and climate change
Climate change effects are already significant, but can also magnify other ecological problems. This can be clearly seen in the Laurentian Great Lakes, which have suffered habitat degradation, fishery overharvest and dramatic alterations by invasive species. Thermal changes are expected to cause extensive loss of suitable fish habitat, and changing precipitation patterns will aggravate the problem
Authors
James E. McKenna
Bottom trawl assessment of Lake Ontario prey fishes
Collaborative Lake Ontario bottom trawl surveys, led by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), provide science and management information for evaluating Fish Community Objectives including predator-prey balance and prey fish community diversity. In 2018, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC), Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry (OMNR), and the (US
Authors
Brian C. Weidel, Michael J. Connerton, Jeremy Holden
2017 Status of the Lake Ontario Lower Trophic Levels
Significant Findings for Year 2017:
1) Offshore spring total phosphorus (TP) in 2017 was 4.4 µg/L; values remained stable since 2001. Offshore soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP) remained low (1.1 µg/L) in 2017; Apr/May – Oct mean values have been stable in nearshore and offshore habitats since 1998 (range, 0.4 – 3.3 µg/L). Apr/May – Oct mean TP concentrations were low at both nearshore and offs
Authors
Kristen T. Holeck, Lars G. Rudstam, Christopher Hotaling, Russ D. McCullough, Dave Lemon, Web Pearsall, Jana Lantry, Mike Connerton, Chris Legard, Steve LaPan, Zy Biesinger, Brian F. Lantry, Brian C. Weidel
Fisheries research and monitoring activities of the Lake Erie Biological Station, 2017
This report presents biomass-based summaries of fish communities in western Lake Erie derived from USGS bottom trawl surveys from 2013 to 2017 during June and September. The survey design provided temporal and spatial coverage that does not exist in the interagency trawl database, and thus complemented the August Ohio-Ontario effort to reinforce stock assessments with more robust data. Analyses he
Authors
Kevin R. Keretz, Patrick Kočovský, Richard T. Kraus, Christopher Vandergoot
Status and trends of pelagic prey fish in Lake Huron, 2017
Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey’s Great Lakes Science Center conducted integrated acoustic and mid-water trawl surveys of Lake Huron in 1997 and annually from 2004-2017. The 2017 survey was conducted during September and included transects in Lake Huron’s main basin, Georgian Bay, and North Channel. Mean lake-wide pelagic fish density was 1582 fish/ha and mean pelagic fish biomass was 1
Authors
Timothy P. O'Brien, David M. Warner, Peter C. Esselman, Steve A. Farha, Steve Lenart, Chris Olds, Kristy Phillips
Describing the distribution and productivity of biota along a nearshore to offshore gradient
The Lake Michigan Lakewide Action and Management Plan (LAMP) proposed adding nutrients (phosphorus) to its “pollutant of concern” list in 2002, given that excessive nutrients were causing impairments in nearshore waters. Since that time, scientists have highlighted the “shunting” of nutrients to the nearshore (Hecky et al. 2004), owing to the ability of invasive dreissenid mussels to capture some
Authors
David B. Bunnell, Patricia M. Dieter, David M. Warner, Lauren A. Eaton, Drew Eppehimer
Status of pelagic prey fishes in Lake Michigan, 2017
Acoustic surveys were conducted in late summer/early fall during the years 1992-1996 and 2001-2017 to estimate pelagic prey fish biomass in Lake Michigan. Midwater trawling during the surveys as well as target strength provided a measure of species and size composition of the fish community for use in scaling acoustic data and providing species-specific abundance estimates. The 2017 survey consi
Authors
David M. Warner, Ben Turscah, Dale Hanson, Timothy J. Desorcie, Timothy P. O'Brien, Patricia M. Dieter, Jason Smith
Evaluating consumptive and nonconsumptive predator effects on prey density using field times series data
Determining the degree to which predation affects prey abundance in natural communities constitutes a key goal of ecological research. Predators can affect prey through both consumptive effects (CEs) and nonconsumptive effects (NCEs), although the contributions of each mechanism to the density of prey populations remain largely hypothetical in most systems. Common statistical methods applied to ti
Authors
John A. Marino Jr., Scott D. Peacor, David Bunnell, Henry A. Vanderploeg, Steven A. Pothoven, Ashley K. Elgin, James R. Bence, J. Jiao, Edward L. Ionides
Food‐web structure and ecosystem function in the Laurentian Great Lakes—Toward a conceptual model
The relationship between food‐web structure (i.e., trophic connections, including diet, trophic position, and habitat use, and the strength of these connections) and ecosystem functions (i.e., biological, geochemical, and physical processes in an ecosystem, including decomposition, production, nutrient cycling, and nutrient and energy flows among community members) determines how an ecosystem resp
Authors
Jessica T. Ives, Bailey C. McMeans, Kevin S. McCann, Aaron T. Fisk, Timothy B. Johnson, David B. Bunnell, Kenneth T. Frank, Andrew M. Muir
Root endophytes and invasiveness: no difference between native and non‐native Phragmites in the Great Lakes Region
Microbial interactions could play an important role in plant invasions. If invasive plants associate with relatively more mutualists or fewer pathogens than their native counterparts, then microbial communities could foster plant invasiveness. Studies examining the effects of microbes on invasive plants commonly focus on a single microbial group (e.g., bacteria) or measure only plant response to m
Authors
Wesley A. Bickford, Deborah E. Goldberg, Kurt P. Kowalski, Donald R. Zak
Cyanobacteria reduce motility of quagga mussel (Driessena rostriformis bugensis) sperm
The temporal expansion of harmful algal blooms, primarily associated with cyanobacteria, may impact aquatic organisms at vulnerable life history stages. Broadcast spawning species release gametes into the water column for external fertilization, directly exposing sperm to potential aquatic stressors. To determine if cyanobacteria can disrupt reproduction in freshwater broadcast spawners, we evalua
Authors
Anna G. Boegehold, Karim Alame, Nicholas S. Johnson, Donna R. Kashian
Status and Trends in the Lake Superior Fish Community, 2017
In 2017, the Lake Superior fish community was sampled with daytime bottom trawls at 76 nearshore and 36 offshore stations. Spring nearshore and summer offshore water temperatures in 2017 were similar to slightly cooler than the 1991-2017 average. In the nearshore zone, a total of 28,902 individual fish from 27 species or morphotypes were collected. The number of species collected at each station r
Authors
Mark Vinson, Lori M. Evrard, Owen T. Gorman, Daniel Yule