Researchers Find Broad Impacts from Lake Trout Invasion in Yellowstone
http://www.uwyo.edu/uw/news/2019/03/researchers-find-broad-impacts-from-lake-trout-invasion-in-yellowstone.htmlPaper: Predatory fish invasion induces within and across ecosystem effects in Yellowstone National Park
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/3/eaav1139Quote: "Bald eagles shifted their diet to compensate for the loss of cutthroat trout. Even with that shift in diet, the average number of bald eagle nests on Yellowstone Lake dropped from 11 in 2004-08 to eight in 2013-17. And nesting success dropped from 56 percent in 1985-89 to zero in 2009, before rebounding to 70 percent during 2013-17 as the eagles found alternative food sources.
Bald eagles at Yellowstone Lake have been seen more frequently preying on common loons, trumpeter swan cygnets and young white pelicans, possibly contributing to declines in those bird numbers as well."
UW researcher Lusha Tronstad holds a large cutthroat trout captured in Clear Creek, a tributary stream of Yellowstone Lake, when she was a Ph.D. student in spring 2005. The numbers of spawning cutthroats in the lake's tributaries have increased in recent years as a result of efforts to reduce the numbers of lake trout, whose presence has affected a number of other species in the Yellowstone Lake ecosystem since they were illegally introduced in the 1980s. (Lusha Alzner Photo)
Topological placement of taxa in the Yellowstone Lake food web before (left) and after (right) invasion by nonnative lake trout.
The conceptualization (nonmathematical) emphases are the cutthroat trout (YCT) and other components known (black arrows) or hypothesized (orange arrows) to be affected by the introduction of lake trout (LKT). Thick arrows indicate that the consumption of that food item is high by predator or herbivore, and thin arrows indicate that the consumption is low, within the aquatic (below the blue line) and across terrestrial (above the blue line) ecosystems. Letters represent consumption of (A) phytoplankton, (B) zooplankton, (C) amphipods, (D to G) cutthroat trout, (H) longnose suckers, (I) elk calves, and (J) common loon, trumpeter swan, American white pelican, double-crested cormorant, and Caspian tern. Organisms are not drawn to scale, although the size of the fish, osprey, and otter depicts observed shifts in abundance between periods. California gulls were present before lake trout invasion but no longer nest on Yellowstone Lake.