August 5, 2021 at 1:48 p.m.
Fish Like a GIRL
Trout Lake Station open house marks first in-person event for facility in over a year
Fish Like a GIRL
By Beckie Gaskill-bjoki@lakelandtimes.com
This year's event was held July 30 and each station had activities for the public to complete. Attendees could complete all of the activities to earn the distinction of Pro Scientist.
UW-Madison Center for Limnology at Trout Lake Station associate scientist Susan Knight was on hand to talk with attendees about some of the plants and animals they would likely experience in waters around the Northwoods. One of the most interesting to many, and one of her personal favorites, are bryozoans. These animals are microscopic invertebrates that live in colonies that may look similar to a big ball of jelly. They attach themselves to structures such as rocks or branches that are submerged. They are filter feeders often called "moss animals." Knight said she recently found a lake that was home to many bryozoans.
Trout Lake Station, she said, is water-focused and is associated with the Center for Limnology at UW-Madison. It is one of two labs associated with the Center. Each year, she said, graduate students display their work to the public through this open house. Graduate students, she said, may be working on a project for two or three years, unveiling any new findings each year.
Charles Lomsted's presentation and research revolved around bacteria. Approximately half of the bacteria that live in the water column near bogs have the ability to produce or consume electricity, or sometimes both. That process, he said, has not been studied. He wanted to know why, ecologically, that process was there. His hypothesis, he said was that in organisms that produce electricity, it was their form of respiration. Those that generate electricity, he said, could conduct their electrons onto things like iron, rocks or electrodes. Those that are consuming electrons, he believes, are doing so to build biomass. He hopes his research will shed more light on these assumptions.
Graduate student Amber White was also looking at aquatic herbicides and what their build up in sediments may mean. She was looking mainly at how bacteria break down herbicides such as 2,4-D.
"What I'm interested in is what happens to the herbicide once it's in the water," she said. She wanted information about concentrations over time and how long it takes for the chemicals to move away from the application site. "It seems like bacteria in the sediment break it down very quickly." She was looking at the active ingredient in ProcellaCor as well.
ProcellaCor has been touted as being better for non-target organisms and does not last as long in the environment. This was her first year studying ProcellaCor, she said, and she was not sure yet if it was necessarily "better" than 2,4-D. This would also depend on how one would qualify "better." It could mean more selectivity of target or it could mean it stays in the environment for a much shorter time frame. She said she hoped to have some initial results by this fall.
Cheyenne Stratton, a student at the University of Florida, is conducting research at Trout Lake Station to look at the population of the invasive species of rusty crayfish in the lake. Those populations have been crashing in recent years, due to a spore-forming parasite that is closely related to fungus. The spores, she said, replace the muscle tissue in the rusty crayfish. They will become lethargic and will eat less, eventually succumbing to the disease.
Stratton's study, looking at how Trout Lake is responding to the decline in the invasive crayfish population, will continue for three years. She will be looking at the aquatic plant community, the macro invertebrates, crayfish, fish and snails specifically. The snail community had declined by 99% by 2004, she said, and how researchers were observing snails in many locations in the lake as well as seeing macrophytes in the lake again. Stratton said, for the first time in many years, she has been able to collect native crayfish from Trout Lake.
Adriana Gorski is spending her time at Trout Lake Station studying winter limnology. She does this with the help of an amphibious vehicle and ice fishing gear. The push, she said, is to find out what happens under the ice.
For the past two years, she removed snow from an area of the lake and looked at what might happen to lake communities based on light penetration. In 2019, with the slush layer, it was more difficult, she said, but the past winter made for perfect conditions with very clear ice. With more light penetration, she said, the water was greener, showing algae and more plants. Her main interest, though, is greenhouse gasses that lakes naturally emit such as carbon dioxide and methane. Her research will focus on changes in those variables based on light penetration throughout the winter.
Holly Embke is in year five of her whole-lake removal of bass and sunfish from McDermott Lake in Iron County. Her question is whether the removal of these species will bolster the failing walleye populations in that lake. Up to 300,000 fish had been removed at this point, she said.
"So far we have seen a bit of an increase in adult walleye population," she said. "No detection of increase in natural recruitment from walleye, but we have started to see a major uptick in yellow perch in both abundance and size."
These removals, she said, did not seem to be a silver bullet, as sunfish tend to bounce back quickly. In another study, however, bullheads were pulled out of lakes, which seemed to show a good deal of success. McDermott Lake, though, does not have a strong bullhead population. She said, in this case, that would not be a determining factor for walleye populations in lakes such as this.
Erin Matula was working with Knight looking at different factors that may be effecting wild rice populations, which have experienced declines in many lakes. Matula said she was looking at the seed bank to see how much of that seed bank was viable. Many of the seeds she had found, she said, were dead. She felt this could be another reason for the decline as well as conditions such as variability in depth, bottom type, invasive species or even some native plants such a pond lilies, which will crowd out wild rice.
Levi Feucht is a technical lead on a project looking at reducing and removing invasive rainbow smelt while improving native forage fish such as cisco. In lakes where invasive rainbow smelt have been introduced, species such as cisco have been all but extirpated, he said. The hope is that manual removal of smelt, as well as stocking of native forage fish, will keep populations of those invasive species down. At this station, visitors could select their "catch" from a pelagic food web net on display. Those who correctly selected the invasive smelt received a stamp to help them on their way to becoming a Pro Scientist.
Many of the researchers expect to have more information from this year's study available by this fall. Several stated they looked forward to sharing their information with our readers. I will be sure to share those results here in this Outdoors section as they become available.
Beckie Gaskill may be reached at bgaskill@lakelandtimes.com or outdoors@lakelandtimes.com.
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