Publications

The ability to monitor invasive sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) populations in the Laurentian Great Lakes is critical to protecting the region’s $ 7 billion USD fishing industry and preserving its biodiversity. Monitoring these invaders requires considerable fieldwork and human power, making remote lamprey detection systems attractive for their continuous monitoring capabilities and...

Coregonine fishes (Coregonus spp.) are important components of Great Lake food webs and support lucrative commercial and recreational fisheries. Due to a combination of several factors including habitat loss, over-exploitation, and introduction of exotic species, the distribution and abundance of coregonines have been reduced. Examples of these declines are evident in Lake Erie where...

The St. Clair-Detroit River System is located in the heart of the North American Laurentian Great Lakes, connecting lakes Huron and Erie, contributing over 90% of the inflow to Lake Erie, and providing spawning habitat for many fishes including walleye (Sander vitreus), yellow perch (Perca flavescens), and lake whitefish (Coregonus clupeaformis). Dredging and channelization have greatly...

Degradation of lake whitefish (Coregonus clupeaformis) spawning areas in the Detroit River, Maumee Bay, and western Lake Erie reefs and shoals has been identified as a contributing factor to Lake Erie’s population collapse in the 1950s. This decline prompted the United States and Canada to take steps to improve the aquatic ecosystem of Lake Erie. A recent increase in commercial fish...

Prior to European settlement, cisco (Coregonus artedi) were likely one of Lake Ontario’s most abundant fishes but currently represent a small portion of the fish community. To understand how the population has changed over the past 70 years we compared trends in annual catch rates from gillnet and bottom trawl surveys and commercial fishery landings. In surveys, cisco were generally rare...

Understanding the population structure of invasive sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) in the Great Lakes basin is essential for an effective control program. We review knowledge of lake connectivity, dispersal during the parasitic stage, and results from phenotypic, demographic, and genetic studies to evaluate how sea lamprey populations are structured. There is no evidence for...

Survival of adult fishes is critical to the conservation and management of wild populations, particularly for long-lived, slow to reproduce species. Most sturgeon species are of conservation concern, but their long lifespans and large ranges have made estimation of adult survival rates challenging. In this study, acoustic telemetry was used to track 205 lake sturgeon (Acipenser...

The collapse of Diporeia spp. and invasions of dreissenid mussels (zebra, Dreissena polymorpha; quagga, D. bugensis) and round goby (Neogobius melanostomus) have been associated with declines in abundance of native benthic fishes in the Great Lakes, including historically abundant slimy sculpin (Cottus cognatus). We hypothesized that as round goby colonized deeper habitat, slimy sculpin...

Lampreys (order: Petromyzontiformes) represent one of two extant groups of jawless fishes, also called cyclostomes. Lampreys have a variety of unique features that distinguish them from other fishes. Here we review the physiological features of lampreys that have contributed to their evolutionary and ecological success. The term physiology is used broadly to also include traits involving...

Lake Ontario boasts a diverse fish community comprised of native and introduced species that support vibrant recreational, commercial and Indigenous fisheries. The effective delivery of a program to assess and control the sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) is crucial to achievement of Lake Ontario Fish Community Objectives of rehabilitating native fish stocks while protecting and...

We demonstrate, for the first time, the ability to reliably assign an assemblage of larval coregonines [Salmonidae Coregoninae] to shallow and multiple deepwater species. Larval coregonines from the Apostle Islands, Lake Superior, were genotyped using restriction site-associated DNA sequencing (RADseq) and were assigned to species using reference genotypes from adult corgonines from the...

Developing an understanding of factors that influence the accumulation and magnification of heavy metals in fish of the Laurentian Great Lakes is central to managing ecosystem and human health. We measured muscle tissue concentrations of heavy metals in Lake Michigan prey fish that vary in habitat use, diet, and trophic position, including alewife, bloater, deepwater sculpin, round goby...