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Exploring Great Lakes benthoscapes: can we visually delineate hypoxic habitats?

  • TRENDS IN AQUATIC ECOLOGY IV
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Abstract

Benthic macroinvertebrate communities are useful indicators for biological assessment of environmental and anthropogenic stressors, but our ability to quantify benthic populations is constrained by small spatial scales of traditional grab sampling and labor-intensive processing. During the 2019 assessment of Lake Erie’s benthic community we studied lake benthoscapes by enhancing the traditional collection of grabs at 68 stations with underwater imagery, water quality, and sediment nutrients data. Four major habitats were identified from video data including Dreissena aggregations, Hexagenia burrows, and biogenic structures (“chimneys” and “tubes”). All four habitats differed in near-bottom dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration, with the highest DO found above dreissenids and the lowest in chimney habitats. DO, turbidity, and chlorophyll concentration provided the largest contribution to the MaxEnt model and predicted benthoscape distribution. There was a significant separation of benthic species by selected benthoscapes confirmed by independent cluster analysis. Suitable habitat for Dreissena was limited to normoxic areas, and Hexagenia habitats to the western basin. The central basin, subject to summer hypoxia, was mostly characterized by tube and chimney habitats. The agreement among biological, video, and abiotic data confirmed that video analysis can provide a novel, quick, and reliable method to detect benthic habitats affected by periodic hypoxia.

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Data availability

The datasets and video generated and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative via a cooperative agreement with Cornell University, Department of Natural Resources under Prime Agreement Award GL 00E02259-2 from the U.S. EPA “Great Lakes Long-Term Biological Monitoring Program 2017–2022” (PI L. Rudstam, Co-PIs Burlakova & Karatayev). The authors would like to thank senior taxonomist S. Daniel, technicians E. Hartnett, K. Hastings, and B. Tulumello (Great Lakes Center, GLC), SUNY Buffalo State graduate and undergraduate students E. Burch, M. Kocher, C. Perry, J. Powell, B.Z. Szczygiel, and A. Mathew for sample processing and identification. We also would like to thank V. Karatayev (Guelph University) for help with data analysis and Administrative Assistant S. Dickinson (GLC) for proofreading the manuscript. We acknowledge the Captain, crew, and scientists aboard the U.S. EPA R/V Lake Guardian who helped to collect and produce the data presented here including marine technicians M. Morgan, K. Johncock, A. Hamm, and H. Reed, scientists M. Wick and M. Pawlowski (Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education), M. Bakowska, and N. Mrozinska (Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland), S. Shivarudrappa (GLC), L. Katona (Wright State University), J. Connolly (Cornell University), and P. Glyshaw (NOAA). We thank A. Elgin and colleagues (NOAA) who collected samples from three benthic stations in western basin. We are grateful to the Editor and two anonymous reviewers whose thorough comments and suggestions helped improve and clarify this manuscript. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the U.S. EPA. Any use of trade, product or firm names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. EPA.

Funding

This research was supported by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative via a cooperative agreement with Cornell University, Department of Natural Resources under Prime Agreement Award GL 00E02259-2 from the U.S. EPA “Great Lakes Long-Term Biological Monitoring Program 2017-2022” (PI L. Rudstam, Co-PIs Burlakova & Karatayev).

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  1. Great Lakes Center, SUNY Buffalo State, Buffalo, NY, USA

    Lyubov E. Burlakova, Alexander Y. Karatayev & Knut Mehler

  2. United States Environmental Protection Agency, Great Lakes National Program Office, Chicago, IL, USA

    Elizabeth K. Hinchey

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  1. Lyubov E. Burlakova
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Correspondence to Lyubov E. Burlakova.

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Burlakova, L.E., Karatayev, A.Y., Mehler, K. et al. Exploring Great Lakes benthoscapes: can we visually delineate hypoxic habitats?. Hydrobiologia 850, 1331–1353 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-022-04821-z

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