Publications

Fall bottom trawl (fall BT) and lakewide acoustic (AC) surveys are conducted annually to generate indices of pelagic and benthic prey fish densities in Lake Michigan. The fall BT survey has been conducted each fall since 1973 using 12-m trawls at depths ranging from 9 to 110 m at fixed locations distributed across seven transects; this survey estimates densities of seven prey fish...

Overfishing, habitat loss, and pollution caused the extirpation of Lake Sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens) throughout much of the Great Lakes. A Lake Sturgeon reintroduction program using two rearing strategies began in 2018 in the Maumee River, a tributary of Lake Erie. We assessed the movement of streamside or traditionally reared age-0 Lake Sturgeon using acoustic telemetry to determine...

Coregonine fishes play a key role in the food webs and fisheries of the Laurentian Great Lakes and are a major focus of basin-wide conservation efforts. In Lake Erie, management goals prioritize rebuilding spawning populations of cisco (Coregonus artedi). However, the historical distribution of cisco spawning habitat and the environmental conditions that influence early life-stage...

Understanding the distributions of rare species is necessary to guide monitoring and inform species recovery efforts. The rusty patched bumble bee (RPBB; Bombus affinis, Cresson) is an endangered species with an extant, known distribution centered around urban areas of the Midwestern United States. We tested a novel approach for finding undocumented RPBBs outside of urban centers and...

Since invading the Laurentian Great Lakes in the late 1980s, round goby Neogobius melanostomus have become a dominant benthic prey species, resulting in a need to accurately monitor their population abundance to inform fisheries management. Camera-based methods for assessing round goby abundances have gained popularity, but their efficiencies for detecting round goby are poorly...

Species diversity is the foundation of many ecological disciplines. This metric is often approximated using species richness and evenness, even though actual richness likely exceeds observations due to imperfect sampling methods. Estimating the “true” species richness, which includes identifying the number of missing species, has intrigued ecologists for decades. We adopted a parametric...

Several of the Laurentian Great Lakes, including Lake Huron, have undergone oligotrophication in the past decades and prey fish biomass has concomitantly declined. One potential mechanism to explain declines in prey fish is slower growth and lower survival at the larval stage. To determine whether reduced productivity affects the growth of larval fish, we sampled larval fishes and their

No abstract available.

Coastal wetlands of the Laurentian Great Lakes are complex ecosystems that provide essential biological services, including providing habitat for a suite of fish species. As restoration efforts for these coastal wetlands increase, there is a need to characterize how well restored areas support the life histories of wetland, riverine, and lake fishes. Most traditional survey methods (e.g...

Lake Ontario Lake Trout (Salvelinus namaycush) rehabilitation has been assessed with fishery dependent and independent surveys to evaluate program benchmarks and compare observations with management objectives since 1983. These surveys provide information on the abundance, strain composition, and performance of stocked Lake Trout, as well as information on levels of natural recruitment...

Lake Erie has the most populated watershed of all the Great Lakes and has undergone dramatic anthropogenic changes. Since the 1800s, overexploitation of fish populations, habitat destruction, non-native species proliferation, industrial contamination, and changes in nutrient loading have impacted the fish community including declines in or extirpation of many native species (Regier et al...

Since 1978, bottom trawl surveys in Lake Ontario have provided information on the status and trends of the benthic prey fish community related to Fish Community Objectives that include understanding prey fish population dynamics and community diversity. Beginning in 2015, the benthic prey fish survey expanded from only U.S. sites to incorporate Canadian sites, increasing the survey’s...