2023 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference

March 5-7, 2023 • Cincinnati, OH

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5/22/2018 | 9:15 AM - 9:30 AM | THE INFLUENCE OF WINTER SEVERITY ON THE COUPLING BETWEEN LAKE ERIE LARVAL WALLEYE AND THEIR PREY | 410 A

THE INFLUENCE OF WINTER SEVERITY ON THE COUPLING BETWEEN LAKE ERIE LARVAL WALLEYE AND THEIR PREY

Due to climate warming, winter ice in the Laurentian Great Lakes has declined by 71% over the past four decades (Wang et al. 2012). Walleye recruitment in Lake Erie, which shows a positive relationship with winter ice cover, has been consistently low since 2003, except following the extremely cold winter of 2015. Here, we examine the hypothesis that warm winters result in a temporal mismatch between walleye larvae and their zooplankton prey. We evaluated this hypothesis with Western Basin Lake Erie zooplankton data from 2011-2016. Following the record warm winter in 2012, walleye spawning occurred much earlier than in normal years; our results showed that zooplankton spring blooms also occurred earlier in 2012. Across all years, the biomass of walleye preferred zooplankton prey (Cyclopoids and small Cladocerans) had relatively low densities during the period when larval walleye consume zooplankton, regardless of winter severity. Our results suggest that warm winters are not resulting in temporal decoupling of walleye larvae and their preferred zooplankton prey.

Great Lakes
Temporal
Fish

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Presenters/Authors

Amara Huddleston (), The Ohio State University, huddleston.75@osu.edu;