Publications

To determine if a survival bottleneck occurs in Lake Erie's lake whitefish (Coregonus clupeaformis) population and explore possible mechanisms responsible, we examined contemporary and historical dynamics of lake whitefish eggs, larvae and juveniles. Widespread spawning and low overwinter egg retention were observed in 2016–2018, however subsequent larval CPUE remained consistent with...

Sea lamprey (SL; Petromyzon marinus), one of the oldest living vertebrates, have a complex metamorphic life cycle. Following hatching, SL transition into a microphagous, sediment burrowing larval stage, and after 2–10+ years, the larvae undergo a dramatic metamorphosis, transforming into parasitic juveniles that feed on blood and bodily fluids of fishes; adult lamprey cease feeding...

Costs to producing sexual signals can create selective pressures on males to invest signaling effort in particular contexts. When the benefits of signaling vary consistently across time, males can optimize signal investment to specific temporal contexts using biological rhythms. Sea lamprey, Petromyzon marinus, have a semelparous life history, are primarily nocturnal, and rely on...

Human-driven environmental change underlies recent changes in water clarity in many of the world’s great lakes, yet our understanding of the consequences of these changes on the fish and fisheries they support remains incomplete. Herein, we offer a framework to organize current knowledge, guide future research, and help fisheries managers understand how water clarity can affect their...

Fish population structure in previously glaciated regions is often influenced by natural colonization processes and human-mediated dispersal, including fish stocking. Endemic populations are of conservation interest because they may contain rare and unique genetic variation. While coregonines are native to certain Michigan inland lakes, some were stocked with fish from Great Lakes...

Various ecomorphs of shallow-water Cisco Coregonus artedi were the dominant fish planktivores in each of the Great Lakes until invasive species and over fishing resulted in extirpations and extinctions. In this paper we describe the present morphological diversity and distribution of shallow-water Ciscoes in each of Lake Huron’s three basins: the main basin, Georgian Bay, and North...

The decline in the eastern North American population of the monarch butterfly population since the late 1990s has been attributed to the loss of milkweed during the summer breeding season and the consequent reduction in the size of the summer population that migrates to central Mexico to overwinter (milkweed limitation hypothesis). However, in some studies the size of the summer...

No abstract available.

Since the identification of 3-trifluoromethyl-4-nitrophenol as a lampricide in the 1950s, control of sea lamprey populations in the Great Lakes has largely relied on lampricides, barriers, and traps. Lampricide treatments target larval lampreys in tributaries of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Fishery Commission oversees sea lamprey control efforts and has invested in technologies that...

Cisco Coregonus artedi was once an important native fish in Lake Ontario; however, after multiple population crashes, the cisco stock has yet to recover to historic abundances. Rehabilitation of cisco in Lake Ontario is a fish community management objective, but the extent to which recent non-native species and pelagic food web changes have influenced cisco is not well understood. We...

Water clarity is often the primary guiding factor in determining whether a prefiltration step is needed to increase volumes processed for a range of microbial endpoints. In this study, we evaluate the effect of filter pore size on the bacterial communities detected by 16S rRNA gene sequencing and incidence of two host-specific microbial source tracking (MST) markers in a range of coastal...

Significant Findings for Year 2020: Note that due to covid-19 restrictions, offshore sampling was limited in 2020. 1) May – Oct total phosphorus (TP) in 2020 was 10.6 µg/L (offshore) and 7.7 µg/L (nearshore), higher than the long-term (1995-2019) average in the offshore (6.2 µg/L) and close to average in the nearshore (7.8 µg/L); mean TP values for the past decade (2010-2019) were 6.0 µg...