Many AELers are presenting or otherwise participating in the American Fisheries Society (AFS) Virtual Annual Meeting. This year's meeting was originally planned to occur in Columbus, Ohio, and Stu Ludsin and others had already done a great deal to prepare when the meeting had to shift to a virtual event due to the covid-19 pandemic.

Symposium: Contributions of Research on Early Life Stages of Fish to Informing Fisheries Management

Organized by Stu Ludsin, Libby Marschall, and Zoe Almeida, this symposium seeks to begin to identify generalities regarding the use of ELSs to answer questions about the dynamics of fish populations (especially exploited ones), learn the state-of-the-art regarding how to use ELS investigations to address these questions, and identify future areas of research.

In this symposium. three AELers are presenting:

• Rich Budnik, Prey Quality and Quantity during the Larval Period Regulates Recruitment of Lake Erie Walleye
  • co-authors: Cassie May (AEL alumna), Stu Ludsin, Danny O'Donnell, Jim Hood, Ed Roseman, and Libby Marschall
• David Dippold, Building (More) Useful Predictive Environment-Recruitment Models: A Case Study with Lake Erie Walleye
  • co-authors: Leon Boegman, Qi Wang, and Stu Ludsin
• Luke Bobay, To What Degree Do Preferred Prey Abundance and Temperature Influence Growth Rates of Larval Yellow Perch in Lake Erie?
  • co-authors: Zoe Almeida, Libby Marschall, and Stu Ludsin

Symposium: Confronting Present and Emerging Stressors in Rivers for Global Fisheries Conservation

Libby Marschall, with colleagues James Garvey of Southern Illinois University and Michael Moore of University of Missouri, organized this live symposium which sought to identify emerging, globally relevant themes in environmental stressors of rivers, with a goal of finding tractable and portable solutions.

Other talks

AELers giving talks in other symposia include:

• Zoe Almeida, Larval Growth and Size-Selective Predation As Potential Drivers of Walleye Recruitment in the symposium: Biology, Management, and Culture of Walleye, Sauger, and Yellow Perch: Status and Needs
  • co-authors: Stu Ludsin, Cassie May (AEL alumna), David Glover (former AEL postdoc), Ed Roseman, and Libby Marschall
  • Zoe also received the J. Frances Allen Scholarship Award
• Rachael Finigan, Spatial Variation in Largemouth Bass Life-History Traits Among Ohio Populations
  • co-author: Libby Marschall
• Cathy Doyle, A Comparison of Aquaculture Production Methods for Optimizing Production of Fingerling Yellow Perch (Perca flavescens)
  • co-authors: Dave Culver, and Jesse Filbrun (AEL alumnus)
  • Cathy also received a travel award for AFS this year 
• Ben Marcek, Using an Individual-Based Model with Physiological Constraints to Understand Fish Distributions in Chesapeake Bay
  • co-authors: Mary Fabrizio, Robert Humston, Jian Shen, and Richard Brill
• Ben Marcek, Drivers of Fish Recruitment in a Large, Freshwater Ecosystem are Temporally Dynamic
  • co-authors: Troy Farmer (AEL alumnus), Libby Marschall, Giovanni Petris, and Stu Ludsin

Additionally, Stu Ludsin was a co-author on a talk by former AEL postdoc Josh Stone titled, Hypoxia's Impact on Pelagic Fish Populations in Lake Erie: A Tale of Two Planktivores.