Yellow perch genetic structure and habitat use among connected habitats in eastern Lake Michigan.

Maintenance of genetic and phenotypic diversity is widely recognized as an important conservation priority, yet managers often lack basic information about spatial patterns of population structure and its relationship with habitat heterogeneity and species movement within it. To address this knowledge gap, we focused on the economically and ecologically prominent yellow perch (). In the Lake Michigan basin, yellow perch reside in nearshore Lake Michigan, including drowned river mouths (DRMs)-protected, lake-like habitats that link tributaries to Lake Michigan.

Leveraging a Landscape-Level Monitoring and Assessment Program for Developing Resilient Shorelines throughout the Laurentian Great Lakes.

Traditionally, ecosystem monitoring, conservation, and restoration have been conducted in a piecemeal manner at the local scale without regional landscape context. However, scientifically driven conservation and restoration decisions benefit greatly when they are based on regionally determined benchmarks and goals. Unfortunately, required data sets rarely exist for regionally important ecosystems.

An expanded fish-based index of biotic integrity for Great Lakes coastal wetlands.

Biotic indicators are useful for assessing ecosystem health because the structure of resident communities generally reflects abiotic conditions integrated over time. We used fish data collected over 5 years for 470 Great Lakes coastal wetlands to develop multi-metric indices of biotic integrity (IBI). Sampling and IBI development were stratified by vegetation type within each wetland to account for differences in physical habitat.

Reducing effects of dispersal on the bias of 2-sample mark-recapture estimators of stream fish abundance.

The 2-sample mark-recapture method with Chapman's estimator is often used by inland fishery managers to estimate the reach-scale abundance of stream fish. An important assumption of this method is that no dispersal into or out of the study reach occurs between the two samples. Violations of this assumption are probably common in practice, but their effect on bias (systematic error) of abundance estimates is poorly understood, especially in small populations.

An environmental assessment of a small shallow lake (Little Black Lake, MI) threatened by urbanization.

A limnological survey was conducted of Little Black Lake, MI, and its tributaries during summer 2007. This small, shallow lake is located in a rapidly developing area of west Michigan. As such, our analytical approach and recommendations can serve as a model for other similar systems threatened by urbanization.

Top-down control in a detritus-based food web: fish, shredders, and leaf breakdown.

We tested the hypothesis that fish decrease shredder abundance in leaf packs, thereby reducing leaf breakdown rates. Our goal was to test for the occurrence of a trophic cascade in a detritus-based food web. Willow leaves (Salix spp.