A Review of Fish Early Life History Studies in the Laurentian Great Lakes

Studies of fish early life history reveal important information about life history strategies, recruitment, habitat use, aquaculture, and trophic dynamics.  We undertook a review of fish early life history studies conducted in the Laurentian Great Lakes to assess their evolution and describe the types of studies conducted. We identified 382 publications on Great Lakes early fish eggs and larvae.  Great Lakes fish early life history studies date back to the late 1800s when gametes were collected for culture operations.  These early studies focused on optimizing methods to collect and propagate early life history stages and provided some early taxonomic descriptions. Around the 1970s, many studies were conducted to examine the impacts of entrainment and thermal effects of hydro-power.  Around this same time, examination of the relationships between fish early life history stages and recruitment dynamics began.  Many of these followed theories derived from marine research including the critical stage and match-mismatch hypotheses.  Around 1980, cross-disciplinary studies were initiated that coupled biochemistry, genetics, physical modeling, and fish early life history approaches that examined stock discrimination, physical processes, species at risk, and habitat.  Overall, Great Lakes early life history studies provided unique knowledge benefiting the successful management of sustainable Great Lakes fisheries.