Publications

Benthic copepods (Copepoda: Harpacticoida) in the nearshore sediments of southern Lake Michigan appear to be dominated by two new invasive species. We report the first occurrence in North America of Schizopera borutzkyi Montschenko, a native to the Danube River delta, and Heteropsyllus nr. nunni, likely a new species that is morphologically similar to the marine species Heteropsyllus...

In 1976, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources established a refuge for a nearly depleted population of lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) at Gull Island Shoal, Lake Superior. The refuge was intended to reduce fishing mortality by protecting adult lake trout. We examined the growth dynamics of these lake trout during the period of recovery by comparing estimates of ndividual...

Fishes were assessed in Guffin, Chaumount, and Black River bays in northeastern Lake Ontario with a 7.9-m (headrope) bottom trawl during late September and early October, 1978 to 1997. Fish density declined in the early 1990s with sharp declines in abundance of spottail shiner (Notropis hudsonius), trout-perch (Percopsis omiscomaycus), and johnny darter (Etheostoma nigrum) occurring in...

The Great Lakes Science Center has conducted lake-wide bottom trawl surveys of the fish community in Lake Michigan each fall since 1973. These systematic surveys are performed at depths of 9 to 110 m at each of seven index sites around Lake Michigan. Zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha) populations have expanded to all survey locations and at a level to sufficiently contribute to the...

Fish assemblages from three of the New York Finger Lakes were examined for structure within and between lakes and over time. Species-area relationships indicated that local fish assemblages are the result of recent, lake-specific events that altered the regional species pool. Fish assemblages varied among seasons and those occupying eutrophic waters had different characteristics from...

Three State of the Lakes Ecosystem Conferences have been held since 1996 to encourage the development of Great Lakes indicators of ecosystem health for use in reporting on progress in restoring and maintaining the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the Great Lakes ecosystem. Here we report on the development of an indicator based on burrowing mayflies , Hexagenia...

An electrical barrier was chosen as a possible means to deter movement of round goby Neogobius melanostomus. Feasibility studies in a 2.1-m donut-shaped tank determined the electrical parameters necessary to inhibit round goby from crossing the 1-m stretch of the benthic, electrical barrier. Increasing electrical pulse duration and voltage increased effectiveness of the barrier in...

Round gobies (Neogobius melanostomus), after successfully reproducing in the early 1990s, decimated populations of mottled sculpins (Cottus bairdi) and possibly logperch (Percina caprodes) in the St. Clair River. Studies were conducted during 1994 to determine whether diets of round and tubenose (Proterorhinus marmoratus) gobies overlapped with those of native forage fishes. In the...

Burrowing mayfly nymphs (Hexagenia spp.) were sampled monthly, September through October 1995 and April through August 1996, with a standard Ponar grab (538 cm2 jaw opening) at 16 stations in U.S. waters of Lake St. Clair. Annual production (production, P) was 0 to 477 mg dry weight/m2 at three stations where pollution and sediment grain-size distribution limited the population, and was...

We compared the locations of healed attack marks of the sea lamprey Petromyzon marinus on live lake trout Salvelinus namaycush with those of unhealed attack marks on dead lake trout to determine if the lethality of a sea lamprey attack was related to attack location. Lake trout were collected from Lake Ontario, live fish with gill nets in September 1985 and dead fish with trawls in...

Moe Pond is a dimictic impoundment with surface area of 15.6 ha, a mean depth of 1.8 m, and an unexploited fish community of only two species: brown bullhead (Ameiurus nebulosus) and golden shiner (Notemigonus crysoleucas). The age-1 and older brown bullhead population was estimated to be 4,057 individuals, based on the Schnabel capture-recapture method of population estimation. Density...

Fringing wetlands of the Laurentian Great Lakes are subject to natural processes, such as water-level fluctuation and wave-induced erosion, and to human alterations. In order to evaluate the quality of these wetlands over space and time, biological communities are often examined. This paper reports on the use of adult caddisflies to evaluate fringing wetlands of Lake Huron, Lake Michigan...