Testing for synchrony in recruitment among four Lake Michigan fish species

• Main Authors: Bunnell, David B., Höök, Tomas O., Troy, Cary D., Liu, Wentao, Madenjian, Charles P, Adams, Jean V
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: NRC Research Press (a division of Canadian Science Publishing) 2016
• Subjects: North Atlantic; North Atlantic oscillation
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/73923; http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/cjfas-2015-0534

In the Great Lakes region, multiple fish species display intra-specific spatial synchrony in recruitment success, with inter-annual climate variation hypothesized as the most likely driver. In Lake Michigan, we evaluated whether climatic or other physical variables could also induce spatial synchrony across multiple species, including bloater (Coregonus hoyi), rainbow smelt (Osmerus mordax), yellow perch (Perca flavescens), and alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus). The residuals from stock-recruitment relationships revealed yellow perch recruitment to be correlated with recruitment of both rainbow smelt (r = 0.37) and alewife (r = 0.36). Across all four species, higher than expected recruitment occurred in 5 years between 1978 and 1987 and then switched to lower than expected recruitment in 5 years between 1996 and 2004. Generalized additive models revealed warmer spring and summer water temperatures and lower wind speeds corresponded to higher than expected recruitment for the nearshore-spawning species, and overall variance explained ranged from 14% (yellow perch) to 61% (alewife). For all species but rainbow smelt, higher recruitment also occurred in extremely high or low years of the North Atlantic Oscillation index. The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author.