walleye fish

Relationship between water transparency and walleye (Sander vitreus) muscle glycolytic potential in Northwestern Ontario lakes

This week’s Hot Student Paper features Timothy Bartley, post doc from Bailey McMeans Lab: Relationship between water transparency and walleye (Sander vitreus) muscle glycolytic potential in Northwestern Ontario lakes, published in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Nov 2018.

Environmental conditions are changing in ecosystems around the world, and the apex predators at the top of food webs are responding. In lake ecosystems, top predators are often fish that eat other fish, such as the popular game fish walleye (Sander vitreus). Because walleye is adapted for foraging under low light conditions, we expect it to respond to changes in water transparency, a key environmental condition in lakes that is changing with human activities. In our study, recently published in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, we show that swimming activity, measured by the activity of the enzyme lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), increased with water transparency in lakes across northwestern Ontario. We found that this change in swimming activity is associated with changes in prey size but not with changes in the abundance of prey or where walleye was foraging. Because top predators can have strong impacts on other species, our study suggests that walleye respond to changes in water transparency in ways that may have important consequences for lake food webs.

Congratulations to Timothy Bartley (Post Doc) from Bailey McMeans Lab (UTM) and Kevin McCann Lab (UGuelph)!

Read this paper »