Lake Champlain’s plankton is changing
Ann Arbor, MI — Lake Champlain’s zooplankton (microscopic animals in the water) is changing according to researchers from the Lake Champlain Research Institute at SUNY Plattsburgh. Studying long-term zooplankton dynamics in the lake they found two major shifts in the zooplankton community over the past 20 years. Zooplankton are the primary food source for the pelagic food web, supporting the lake’s Atlantic salmon and lake trout fisheries. Dr. Timothy Mihuc, director or the Lake Champlain Research Institute and the paper’s lead author, said "think of zooplankton as the engine that drives the fishery, without the energy they provide there would be no fishery".
The article describes several major changes in the lake’s planktonic community, in the mid 1990s with a major decline in rotifers (small primitive animals called "wheel animals") and mid 2000s with shifts in other types of plankton called copepods and cladocera (water fleas). Both events are related to invasive species that entered Lake Champlain, the zebra mussel (1990s) and alewife (2000s), illustrating the importance of prevention efforts to keep invasive species from further advancing in our waters. Zebra mussels and alewife already occur in the rest of the Great Lakes but only recently entered Lake Champlain.
Dr. Mihuc states "Lake Champlain has provided us with a great example of how these two invasive species can re-structure an entire ecosystem and why it is imperative that we act now to prevent species invasions like this in the future". Mihuc continues "the most likely next major invader into Lake Champlain is something called the spiny waterflea, which is perilously close to entering the lake at its southern end". Spiny waterfleas already exists in the five Great Lakes.
Original Publication Information
Results of this study, "Long-term Patterns in Lake Champlain's Zooplankton: 1992-2010," are reported by Timothy Mihuc, Fred Dunlap, Casey Binggeli, Luke Myers, Carrianne Pershyn, Amanda Groves and Allison Waring in the special issue on Lake Champlain, of the Journal of Great Lakes Research, published by Elsevier, 2011.
Contacts
For more information about the study, contact Dr. Timothy Mihuc, Lake Champlain Research Institute SUNY Plattsburgh, Plattsburgh, NY 12901; mihuctb@plattsburgh.edu, (518) 564-3039.
For information about the Journal of Great Lakes Research, contact Marlene Evans, Editor, National Water Research Institute, Environment Canada, 11 Innovation Boulevard, Saskatoon, SK, S7N 3H5, Canada; jglr@ec.gc.ca; (306) 975-5310.
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