Predation and Production by Salmonine Fishes in Lake Michigan, 1978–88

1991 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 909-922 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald J. Stewart ◽  
Myriam Ibarra

A marked decline of alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) in Lake Michigan during 1981–83 led to diet shifts by coho (Oncorhynchus kisutch) and chinook salmon (O. tshawytscha) from feeding primarily on large alewife to eating proportionately more immature alewives and other prey. Diets of lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) did not change greatly during that period. Population biomass conversion efficiency averaged 24.5% for coho and 16.6% for lake trout. Chinook salmon suffered an apparent 20% decline in gross conversion efficiency of biomass (25.1 to 20.8%) and a 25% decline in average weight of sport-caught fish. We infer that chinook salmon growth was inhibited by insufficient forage available to them. A simulation of chinook salmon feeding on bloater (Coregonus hoyi) at 8 °C suggested that such behavior could lead to further declines in growth rates. Extension of modeling results to include approximations for brown trout (Salmo trutta) and rainbow trout (O. mykiss) revealed peaks in total annual salmonine predation of 71 000 t in 1983 and 76 000 t in 1987. The alewife was 70% of all prey eaten by salmonines in 1987–88. Lakewide gross production by salmonines was 15 300 t (or 0.27 g∙m−2) in 1987. Ratios of annual gross production to average monthly population biomass were 1.6 for chinook, 1.15 for coho, and only 0.6 for lake trout.

1989 ◽  
Vol 67 (6) ◽  
pp. 1604-1607 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick M. Muzzall

Adult salmonids (101 chinook salmon, Oncorhynchus tshawytscha; 7 coho salmon, Oncorhynchus kisutch; 56 lake trout, Salvelinus namaycush; 6 steelhead, Salmo gairdneri; and 2 brown trout, Salmo trutta) were collected from eastern Lake Michigan (Ludington and Manistee, Michigan) in July–September 1986, and examined for helminths. Eight species (three Cestoda, three Nematoda, two Acanthocephala) were found in the digestive tract and other viscera. Echinorhynchus salmonis and Eubothrium salvelini were the most common helminths found. The intensity of E. salmonis significantly increased as chinook salmon became older and longer.


1997 ◽  
Vol 54 (5) ◽  
pp. 1031-1038
Author(s):  
C A Stow ◽  
L J Jackson ◽  
J F Amrhein

We examined data from 1984 to 1994 for five species of Lake Michigan salmonids to explore the relationship between total PCB concentration and percent lipid. When we compared mean species lipid and PCB values, we found a strong linear correlation. When we compared values among individuals, we found modest positive PCB:lipid associations in brown trout (Salmo trutta), chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch), and rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) collected during spawning, but positive associations were not apparent among nonspawning individuals. Lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) exhibited no discernible PCB:lipid relationship. Our results are not incompatible with previous observations that contaminants are differentially partitioned into lipids within a fish, but these results do suggest that lipids are not a major factor influencing contaminant uptake.


1991 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 318-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Craig Barber ◽  
Luis A. Suárez ◽  
Ray R. Lassiter

A model describing passive accumulation of organic chemicals from the aqueous environment and contaminated food in fish is developed. This model considers both biological attributes of the fish and physicochemical properties of the chemical that determine diffusive exchange across gill membranes and intestinal mucosa. Important biological characteristics addressed by the model are the fish's gill morphometry, feeding and growth rate and fractional aqueous, lipid, and nonlipid organic composition. Relevant physicochemical properties are the chemical's molar volume and n-octanol/water partition coefficient (Kow), which are used to estimate the chemical's aqueous diffusivity and partitioning to the fish's lipid and nonlipid organic fractions respectively. The model is used to describe and to analyze the bioaccumulation of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in Lake Ontario alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus), coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch), rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), brown trout (Salmo trutta), and lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush).


1983 ◽  
Vol 40 (6) ◽  
pp. 681-698 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald J. Stewart ◽  
David Weininger ◽  
Donald V. Rottiers ◽  
Thomas A. Edsall

An energetics model is implemented for lake trout, Salvelinus namaycush, and applied to the Lake Michigan population. It includes an egestion function allowing any proportional mix of fish and invertebrates in the diet, a growth model accounting for both ontogenetic and seasonal changes in energy-density of predator and prey, a model for typical in situ swimming speed, and reproductive energy losses due to gametes shed. Gross conversion efficiency of energy by lake trout over their life (21.8%) is about twice the efficiency of converting biomass to growth because they store large amounts of high-energy fats. Highest conversion efficiencies are obtained by relatively fast-growing individuals, and over half the annual energy assimilated by older age-classes may be shed as gametes. Sensitivity analysis indicates a general robustness of the model, especially for estimating consumption by fitting a known growth curve. Largest sensitivities were for the intercept and weight dependence coefficients of metabolism. Population biomass and associated predatory impact of a given cohort increase steadily for about 3.5 yr then decline steadily after fishing mortality becomes important in the fourth year in the lake. This slow response time precludes manipulation of lake trout stocking densities as a means to control short-term prey fluctuations. Predation by lake trout on alewife, Alosa pseudoharengus, has been increasing steadily since 1965 to about 8 400 t∙yr−1, and is projected to rise to almost 12 000 t∙yr−1 by 1990.


1939 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 446-473
Author(s):  
F. T. K. PENTELOW

1. The growth of brown trout (Salmo trutta), fed on Gammarus pulex, in their first and second years has been studied. 2. The growth in weight varies considerably from week to week but, generally speaking, it increases with increasing size of the fish. It is assumed that in these experiments the second point of inflection of the normal S-shaped growth curve was not reached because the fish were too young. 3. In all the fishes studied there was a period of slow growth during the winter and during the summer. Growth is at its maximum at temperatures between 50 and 60° F. 4. By careful adjustment of the rations it was possible to keep the body weight of the fish approximately constant from week to week. The amount of food required for this purpose varied from 51 to 270 mg./g. of body weight per week, but was mainly between 70 and 102 mg. and was apparently affected by the water temperature, being higher when the water was warmer. 5. Starved fish lost more weight at higher temperatures than at lower, but the loss of weight could not be related to the amount of food required to maintain the body weight constant at a given temperature. 6. The appetite of fully fed fish increases as the temperature rises to 60° F. but generally declines at temperatures higher than this. Between 40 and 50° F. the amount of growth made is roughly directly proportional to the amount of food eaten, but above 50° no such simple relation exists. 7. G. pulex is a very efficient food for trout; generally speaking about 5 g. of this food produce 1 g. increase in weight. If from this amount the quantity required to maintain the body weight constant is subtracted, it is found that 1 g. increase in weight is produced by about 3 g. of food available for growth. 8. The average weight of the Gammarus used as food in this experiment was 0.026 g., and it is estimated that for every gram increase of weight each fish consumed between 200 and 300 Gammarus.


2020 ◽  
Vol 77 (6) ◽  
pp. 1059-1075 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew S. Kornis ◽  
David B. Bunnell ◽  
Heidi K. Swanson ◽  
Charles R. Bronte

Native lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) and introduced Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch), steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss), and brown trout (Salmo trutta) are major predators in Lake Michigan’s complex ecosystem and collectively support a valuable recreational fishery, but declines in their primary prey, alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus), have raised ecological and management concerns about competition and prey allocation. We applied niche overlap analysis to evaluate competition among salmonine predators during rapid forage base change in Lake Michigan. δ13C and δ15N stable isotope ratios indicated that lake trout had a unique trophic niche from inclusion of offshore and benthic prey, with <29% lake-wide niche overlap with Chinook salmon, coho salmon, and steelhead. Brown trout had moderate overlap with other species (45%–91%), while Chinook salmon, coho salmon, and steelhead had high overlap (71%–98%). Regional differences in isotopic signatures highlighted the potential importance of subsystem differences in fish diets in large aquatic systems. The uniqueness of the lake trout niche, and broadness of brown trout and steelhead niches, suggest these species may be resilient to forage base changes. This study further demonstrates how niche overlap analysis can be applied to tease apart competitive interactions and their response to ecosystem change.


2004 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 627-635 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles P Madenjian ◽  
Daniel V O'Connor ◽  
Sergei M Chernyak ◽  
Richard R Rediske ◽  
James P O'Keefe

We evaluated the Wisconsin bioenergetics model for chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) in both the laboratory and the field. Chinook salmon in laboratory tanks were fed alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus), the predominant food of chinook salmon in Lake Michigan. Food consumption and growth by chinook salmon during the experiment were measured. To estimate the efficiency with which chinook salmon retain polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from their food in the laboratory, PCB concentrations of the alewife and of the chinook salmon at both the beginning and end of the experiment were determined. Based on our laboratory evaluation, the bioenergetics model was furnishing unbiased estimates of food consumption by chinook salmon. Additionally, from the laboratory experiment, we calculated that chinook salmon retained 75% of the PCBs contained within their food. In an earlier study, assimilation rate of PCBs to chinook salmon from their food in Lake Michigan was estimated at 53%, thereby suggesting that the model was substantially overestimating food consumption by chinook salmon in Lake Michigan. However, we concluded that field performance of the model could not be accurately assessed because PCB assimilation efficiency is dependent on feeding rate, and feeding rate of chinook salmon was likely much lower in our laboratory tanks than in Lake Michigan.


1987 ◽  
Vol 44 (S2) ◽  
pp. s53-s60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary W. Eck ◽  
Larue Wells

Major changes in fish populations occurred in Lake Michigan between the early 1970s and 1984. The abundance of lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) and several nonnative species of salmonines increased greatly as a result of intensive stocking. The exotic alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus), which had proliferated to extremely high levels of abundance in the mid-1960s, declined, particularly in the early 1980s. We believe that the sharp decline in alewives in the 1980s was caused primarily by poor recruitment during the colder than normal years of 1976–82. Several of Lake Michigan's endemic species of fish appeared to be adversely affected by alewives: bloater (Coregonus hoyi), lake herring (C. artedii), emerald shiner (Notropis atherinoides), yellow perch (Perca flavescens), and deepwater sculpin (Myoxocephalus thompsoni), and possibly spoonhead sculpin (Cottus ricei). All declined when alewives were abundant, and those that did not become rare, i.e. the bloater, perch, and deepwater sculpin recovered when alewives declined. We present evidence suggesting that the mechanism by which alewives affect native species is not by competition for food, as has often been hypothesized, and discuss the possibility that it is predation on early life stages. Despite the decreased availability of alewives in the early 1980s, salmonines continued to eat mainly alewives. The highly abundant alternate prey species were eaten only sparingly, but alewives still may have been abundant enough to meet the forage requirements of salmonines. Two new exotics, the pink salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha) and threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus), increased in abundance in the 1980s, and could become detrimental (particularly the salmon) to other species.


1999 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
E Conrad Lamon III ◽  
S R Carpenter ◽  
C A Stow

Dynamic linear models (DLM) were used to study time trends in annual average polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) concentrations in five species of Lake Michigan salmonids using data collected from 1972 to 1994 by both the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. DLMs use an adaptive fitting procedure to track changes over time in both the level (mean) of the series and the rate of increase or decline (growth rate), in contrast with other approaches that fit fixed parameters. We used DLMs to provide retrospective time series of estimates of rates of decline in PCB concentrations. Growth parameters indicate that PCB declines have slowed more than first-order models fit in the mid-1980s would predict. Growth parameters for brown trout (Salmo trutta) and rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) increased only slightly, indicating the most consistency with first-order dynamics. Coho (Oncorhynchus kisutch) and chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) showed a pattern of high rates of decline in the early to mid-1980s followed by a period of slower PCB concentration changes. The temporal pattern of rates of decline for lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) stood apart from the other species, with a growth parameter that increased steadily during the entire period of record.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document