Performance of temperature and dissolved oxygen criteria to predict habitat use by lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush)

We compared theoretical habitat volumes, determined from traditional combinations of temperature and dissolved oxygen concentration (DO) boundaries, with in situ habitat use by acoustically tagged lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush). The widely used criteria of 8–12 °C underestimated lake trout habitat use by 68%–80%. Instead, combined temperature (<12 or 15 °C) and DO (>4 or 6 mg·L^–1) criteria most closely matched lake trout habitat use, had a similar seasonal trend as the tagged fish, suggested modest reductions (5% of total lake volume) in habitat during a warmer year, and performed best when the constraints of temperature and DO were most limiting. All data were collected in a small boreal shield lake (27 ha, z_max = 21 m) at the Experimental Lakes Area in northwestern Ontario, Canada, during two contrasting periods of thermal stratification (2003: warmer and longer; 2004: cooler and shorter), providing an assessment of observed and theoretical habitat volumes over current environmental extremes.