Hot Fish and Hypoxia: Effects of Dual Stressors on Canadian Freshwater Fishes at Risk & Competition between benthic fish species at risk with trophically overlapping invasive species

Via the partnership fund, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) provided $186,415 in funding to McGill University. The first project will determine the impact of two stressors on species of at-risk fish:

1. how competition with invasive species for the same food source affects species of at-risk benthic fish and
2. how temperature changes, or climate change, might modify their response to this stressor.

The purpose of this research is to better understand how species recover from stress. The information gathered could then be applied to better control aquatic invasive species and thus contribute to improving the status of certain species at risk. The second project will quantify the independent and interactive effects of hypoxia and elevated water temperatures on Pugnose Shiner, Channel Darter, and Easter Sand Darter. Given that hypoxia and global warming are both pervasive aquatic stressors, there is a need for studies to address their interactive effects, particularly in endangered fishes with limited habitat ranges that must respond in situ to environmental change.

Project Number: CA2016.50
Year: 2017, 2018, 2019
Partner: McGill University
Principal Investigator(s): Professor Lauren Chapman, Professor Anthony Ricciardi
Eco-region: Central and Arctic