Oral Presentation Society for Freshwater Science 2025 Annual Meeting

Into the weeds: A landscape-scale analysis of associations between aquatic plants and fish in temperate lakes (117626)

Robert Davis 1 , Ellen Albright 1 , Catherine Hein 1 , Michael Verhoeven 2 , Jeremy Hartsock 3 , Erick Elgin 4 , Heidi Rantala 5 , Zachary Feiner 1 6
  1. Center for Limnology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, United States
  2. Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, USA
  3. Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States
  4. Extension, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States
  5. Fisheries Research, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Duluth, MN, United States
  6. Office of Applied Science, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Madison, WI, United States

Aquatic macrophytes play an important role in shaping lacustrine aquatic ecosystems by affecting water quality, providing habitat for fishes and macroinvertebrates, and altering physio-chemical processes like thermal conditions and nutrient cycling. However, the exact nature of interactions between plant communities and fish communities in Glacial Lakes in the Upper Midwest is unknown. Therefore, the objective of this project is to understand associations between fish and aquatic plants with the goal of developing new, holistic lake habitat management tools. Data from standard fisheries surveys in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan were used to describe the community composition of common game species in lakes and point intercept macrophyte surveys were used to describe the composition and characteristics of macrophyte communities. This study will assess to what extent fish and macrophyte communities are related and what environmental factors are driving relationships between them. Given the projected shifts in fish community composition due to factors like climate change, we anticipate these results will inform aquatic plant and fish community management under shifting ecological paradigms in the Upper Midwest.