A long-term study of nesting male bass in Jones Bay, Lake Opeongo has been ongoing in one form or another since the early 1960's. Since 1977, nest counts have been done each year and since 1983 nesting success ("green fry" stage) has been known for most nests each year. The green fry stage is when offspring initiate metamorphosis from larvae to juveniles ~ all still under parental care.
This system is ideal for research on recruitment ecology of fish. Adults move into shallow areas of Jones Bay, males dig nests and provide parental care for several weeks, eggs are deposited in nests and larvae and juveniles grow and live in the shallow littoral zone. All these stages are directly observed underwater by us (using wet suits, mask and snorkels).
photos courtesy of Rob McGregor & Nicky Butala
Current Projects
- What is the lifetime reproductive success of males?
- 'Male fecundity' (numbers of eggs in a nest) has changed over time ~ are there corresponding changes in egg and hatched embryo mortality?
- What effect does climate change and male size have on nest survival in our long-term data set?
Background
There has been a long history of research on smallmouth bass population ecology in Ontario. Fred Fry, Ken Watt and Jim Fraser began work in the 1940's and 1950's on year-class formation and summer growth conditions at South Bay, Lake Huron. Later Henry Regier and Brian Shuter continued this line of research including various projects on young-of-year growth and nest survival as a function of water temperature. This body of work was synthesized in Shuter et al. (1980; TAFS 109:1-34). Since then the focus has been on dynamics of parental care, young-of-year ecology and nest survival largely in Jones Bay, Lake Opeongo. The Jones Bay long-term study has been under the direction of Mark Ridgway since 1983 while bass data from the creel census has been supervised by Brian Shuter.
Here are the publications that provided the impetus for the long-term research program on smallmouth bass:
Fraser, J.M. 1955. The smallmouth bass fishery of South Bay, Lake Huron. Journal of the Fisheries Research Board of Canada 12: 147-177.
Fry, F.E.J., and K.E.F. Watt. 1957. Yields of year classes of the smallmouth bass hatched in the decade of 1940 in Manitoulin waters. Transactions of the American Fisheries Society 85: 135-143.
Watt, K.E.F. 1957. Studies on population productivity. II. Factors governing productivity in a population of smallmouth bass. Ecological Monographs 29: 367-392. *Read the first paragraph of Watt's paper and see if it speaks to the present such as Hseih et al. 2006 Nature 443: 859-862.
