Sprules Aquatic Ecology Laboratory

Lab Members

W. Gary Sprules - Principal Investigator - The principal theme of my current research is the field measurement of spatial distributions of aquatic organisms, and the impacts of these patterns on the flow of energy through aquatic food webs. Organisms are not uniformly distributed in space and have to meet their energy requirements under these conditions. In fact some evidence suggests aquatic organisms could not survive if their prey were uniformly distributed. However the energy trade-offs that occur with changes in a predator's swimming behaviour, feeding rates, and digestion rates as it moves through spatially complex prey distributions are not understood. I am currently working with a team of colleagues, including physicists, modellers and ecologists, to study the effects of wind-induced water currents on near shore sediment resuspension and associated transfer of energy through algae, zooplankton and larval fish. Our prediction is that such localized nutrient fluxes may provide important subsidies in low productivity lakes typical of temperate zones. This work is being conducted at the Harkness Fisheries Laboratory on Lake Opeongo in Algonquin Park, Ontario.

Audrey Reid - M.Sc. Student - My research deals with assessing the oxygen requirements of freshwater zooplankton. I plan to measure the respiration of individual zooplankton during various activities, such as at rest, swimming, and feeding. Using state-of-the-art optical florescence technology I will make measurements on solitary zooplankton, as opposed to groups of plankton as conducted in the past. My research will help reveal the details of zooplankton energy budgets that permit them to survive in the spatially and temporally heterogeneous environments in which they live.

Lauren Barth - B.Sc. NSERC USRA - I am studying the diel vertical migration of the larvae and pupae of Chaoborus punctipennis in the South Arm basin of Lake Opeongo, Algonquin Park. My field work has consisted of seven 24-hour sample series where I took stratified zooplankton tows in an area of the basin close to an acoustic doppler current profiler (ADCP) that recorded this migration. My analysis will consist of measuring these organisms and using a length-weight regression to determine the mass in milligrams of C. punctipennis larvae and pupae per litre of lake water at a specific depth and time. I hope to correlate my results with the intensity of backscatter recorded by the ADCP so that inferences can be made about the concentration of C. punctipennis larvae and pupae given a specific backscatter intensity reading.

 

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