A comparison of fish communities between a developed and an undeveloped lake in northern Michigan

Rivers, Lakes, & WetlandsLakes tend to attract human development, but the effects of human development on lakes and their fish communities have not been well documented. We compared fish communities in two lakes in Northern Michigan under different levels of human lakeshore development: Burt Lake, which has high levels of human development, and Douglas Lake, which is mostly undeveloped. Over the course of two weeks, we sampled fishes at two similar sites in each lake using minnow traps and seines. The sites were chosen to be similar in habitat complexity, vegetation, and substrate. We compared species richness, diversity (using the Shannon diversity index), abundance in terms of catch per unit effort (CPUE), and standard length distribution of yellow perch between paired sites and between the lakes as a whole. Besides differences in human shoreline development, we looked at differences in nutrients and habitat complexity between sites, to see if these affected fish community as well. We hypothesized that fish community would differ between the lakes. We found that diversity was significantly higher in Burt Lake compared to Douglas, although there was no difference between lakes in terms of richness and abundance. There were other differences in terms of water chemistry, length of game species yellow perch (longer in Douglas Lake) and in terms of which species were found in which sites. We concluded that while human development might indirectly affect fish communities through changing nutrient levels and habitats, fish communities are perhaps more directly affected by factors such as habitat complexity.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/61506/1/Dengate_Elizabeth_2008_RLW.pd