Parentage Analysis for Stocked and Wild Caught Lake Sturgeon in Lake Superior

Lake sturgeon are of management concern throughout the Great Lakes basin. Presumably discrete populations have been extirpated from numerous rivers throughout the Great Lakes. Streamside rearing and stocking has occurred at the Ontonagon River, MI, providing us with the opportunity to assess whether adequate genetic diversity is present in these populations. Eggs and milt are collected from adults in the Sturgeon River, Baraga County, Michigan, and mated at a ratio of 1:4-5 (female:male). Eggs from an individual female are split into batches and each batch is fertilized with milt from an individual male. The fertilized eggs are then re-combined into a single group for the female and reared through the season. It is uncertain whether this procedure results in equal representation of the different families. At the time fingerling fish are stocked, a tissue sample is collected from each fish stocked. The goal of this project is to determine the parentage of lake sturgeon reared in the Ontonagon River streamside rearing trailer and stocked in the Ontonagon River to examine how well each contributing parent was represented in the stocked product. In addition, we seek to reconstruct sibship relationships among fry collected from the Sturgeon River and St. Louis River to determine the number of contributing spawners and their genotype to existing populations of lake sturgeon. This is a notice of intent to award a single source cooperative agreement to West Virginia University under justification 505DM 2.14B.(4). The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, through the Ashland Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office (FWCO), will be substantially involved in this project over a period of several years. In particular, the Service will capture spawning adult lake sturgeon for gamete collection from the Sturgeon River, Baraga County, Michigan, establish annual mating schemes, fertilize and rear eggs to hatch, and rear fish hatched. The Service will provide daily care for 4-5 months annually until ready for stocking at which time each fish will be measured, weighed, and tagged. At time of stocking, the Service will collect a small piece of fin tissue for genetic analysis. The Ashland FWCO will serve as the coordinating office to address any issues or questions related to sample analysis, will distribute results of the genetic analysis to partner agencies, and will contribute as a co-author on presentations and publications resulting from this work. Competition for the award is not practical as the scientists at the genomics lab at West Virginia University have been the lead for Lake Superior lake sturgeon population genetic analysis for over a decade. The genomics lab at West Virginia University already has all baseline genetic data for Great Lakes lake sturgeon and staff have analyzed cohort genetic diversity in other Lake Superior populations making the proposed analysis more economical and efficient.