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Fishes, young and old, are shrinking in Michigan’s inland lakes
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Young walleye, like the one shown here in a 2016 photo, were among the 58 species-age groupings that University of Michigan researchers determined have shrunk over the last 75 years due to climate change. Image credit: David Kenyon, State of Michigan
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A new study led by researchers at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) shows that climate change is affecting the size of fish in Michigan's inland lakes.
Using 75 years' worth of data from nearly 1,500 lakes, they showed that, for several species, old and young fish were typically smaller in 2020 than in 1945.
“Climate change is altering the size of different organisms around the world, including fishes in lakes here in Michigan,” said Peter Flood, a postdoctoral research fellow at SEAS, and the lead author of the new study published in the journal Global Change Biology. “And most of those changes we’re seeing in Michigan fishes are declines in size through time.”
The report is the latest to use data amassed by a community science project that digitized decades worth of observation cards that characterize fishes over time in 1,497 inland lakes in Michigan.
SEAS Associate Professor Karen Alofs, was a senior author of the study. The team included Program in the Environment (PitE) undergraduate researcher Katilin Schiller and Andrew Runyon, who worked on the project as an aquatic biology lab manager in the Alofs Lab. Katelyn King, a fisheries research biologist, and Kevin Wehrly, research station manager with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, also contributed to the study.
Study: Long-term and regional-scale data reveal divergent trends of different climate variables on fish 3 body size over 75 years (DOI: 10.1111/gcb.70584)