Use of Fatty Acid Signatures to Assess Food Web Dysfunction

Grant: # 0869

Grant Amount: $326,524.00

Board Decision Year: 2007

State University of New York- Brockport - Environmental Science and Biology (Brockport)

Environmental Science and Biology

Rinchard, Jacques ([email protected]) 585-395-5750

GLFT - Ecosystem Health and Sustainable Fish Populations-H - Ecological and biological fisheries research to inform management

Project Details

Through a combination of field and laboratory studies, this project sought to evaluate how fatty acid signatures can provide time-integrated and energy-based depictions of food web structure. Researchers developed a fatty acid signature library of available prey for two target species, lake trout and yellow perch, both of which exhibit poor reproductive success in Lake Michigan. They also assessed how changes in nutritional fatty acids, linked to food web changes, can affect reproductive success of both species.