Michael E. Fraker Eric J. Anderson Lucia Carreon-Martinez Kristen M. DeVanna Dan D. Heath Julie M. Reichert Edward F. Roseman Stuart A. Ludsin Reed M. Brodnik 2016 <p>Ability to quantify connectivity among spawning subpopulations and their relative contribution of recruits to the broader population is a critical fisheries management need. By combining microsatellite and age information from larval yellow perch (<i>Perca flavescens</i>) collected in the Lake St. Clair &ndash; Detroit River system (SC-DRS) and western Lake Erie with a hydrodynamic backtracking approach, we quantified subpopulation structure, connectivity, and contributions of recruits to the juvenile stage in western Lake Erie during 2006-2007. After finding weak (yet stable) genetic structure between the SC-DRS and two western Lake Erie subpopulations, microsatellites also revealed measurable recruitment of SC-DRS larvae to the juvenile stage in western Lake Erie (17-21% during 2006-2007). Consideration of pre-collection larval dispersal trajectories, using hydrodynamic backtracking, increased estimated contributions to 65% in 2006 and 57% in 2007. Our findings highlight the value of complementing subpopulation discrimination methods with hydrodynamic predictions of larval dispersal by revealing the SC-DRS as a source of recruits to western Lake Erie and also showing that connectivity through larval dispersal can affect the structure and dynamics of large-lake fish populations.</p> application/pdf 10.1139/cjfas-2015-0161 en NRC Research Press Larval dispersal underlies demographically important inter-system connectivity in a Great Lakes yellow perch (<i>Perca flavescens</i>) population article