Project
Deploy And Evaluate Sea Lamprey Controls That Supplement Lampricides And Barriers – Supcon Stage Ii (2024-2029)
During SupCon Stage 1 (2020-2023), our team renewed a philosophy that new sea lamprey control methods need not be true alternatives to lampricides and sea lamprey barriers (i.e., have similar effectiveness), but instead\\r\\ncan be useful as supplemental controls integrated with current methods, especially in places where current methods are less effective due to environmental or societal conditions (Siefkes et al., 2021). To implement this renewed philosophy about supplemental controls, we developed and implemented an adaptive management implementation plan (Lewandoski et al., 2021) where our learning plan was focused by distilling uncertainty in our model of sea lamprey biology and control into three tractable guiding questions: (1) what habitat characteristics influence sea lamprey recruitment to age-1, (2) what habitat characteristics influence production of parasitic juveniles from age-1 + larvae, and (3) how effectively can supplemental control strategies reduce recruitment of age-1 larvae? Here, we conceive that integration of multiple control tools to reduce reproduction can collectively reduce recruitment of age-1 larvae and that the effects of reducing recruitment can be quantified and compared to lampricide when assessment methods are deployed in years before and during the use of the supplemental controls. Our overall goals are to (1) develop, implement, and evaluate an integrated array of sea lamprey control tools focused on reducing reproduction that will supplement ongoing lampricide and barrier programs and (2) define stream characteristics where supplemental controls provide the greatest reduction in juvenile sea\\r\\nlamprey production.