Relative effects of biotic and abiotic factors during early life history on recruitment dynamics: a case study

The relative effects of biotic and abiotic factors, and the life-history stages upon which they act to affect fish recruitment, vary among species and ecosystems. We compared the effects of spawning stock biomass, and factors operating at early-term (encompassing the egg, yolk-sac larval, and first few days of swim-up larval stages), middle-term (including the swim-up larval and pelagic juvenile stages), and late-term (over the benthic juvenile stage) on recruitment by yellow perch (Perca flavescens) in the western basin of Lake Erie between 1999 and 2013. Variation of recruitment was mainly driven by middle-term effects. Then, abiotic factors, such as warming rate and wind speed, more strongly affected recruitment than did biotic factors. Among middle-term biotic factors, the top-down effect of yearling walleye (Sander vitreus) abundance was stronger than the bottom-up effect of zooplankton abundance. Similar to marine species, physical processes appear to strongly affect recruitment dynamics of Lake Erie yellow perch over its pelagic larval and juvenile stages, demonstrating the importance of physical and biological processes in understanding fish population dynamics in large lakes.