Predicting Black Carp (Mylopharyngodon piceus) age at sexual maturity with water temperature

Abstract

Black Carp is one of the four invasive Asian carps in North America. It is currently considered established in the Mississippi River and has the potential to invade into the Great Lakes watershed. Black Carp is known for its ability to consume freshwater unionids, and thus could bring potential changes to the benthic ecosystems. For effective management and mitigation strategies, it is critical to understand its likely population growth rate in new environments, and to be able to predict the environmental conditions of the potential habitats it may become established in. Age at sexual maturity of the population has been identified as an important variable in determining the population establishment speed, as faster maturation typically corresponds to faster population growth.

I demonstrated that temperature metrics such as air temperature can be used to predict the age of maturity of Black Carp. Using age at maturity data and related climate metrics around the world, I found that winter duration and winter air temperature are the two best predictors of Black Carp age at maturity. This suggests that winter can play an important role in the maturation process of this invasive species. Populations experiencing longer and colder winters tend to mature later.

While temperature may be an important predictor for the speed of Black Carp invasion, water temperature data is not always available for regions of interest. Using empirical water temperature from 12 tributary locations in the Great Lakes watershed, I established a simple statistical model to predict water temperature during the growing season. I found that simple regression-based models using air temperature as input can perform better than a complex processed-based global model for estimating water temperature in the Great Lakes region.