Abstract
It is possible that the alewife is native to Lake Ontario and the gizzard shad to Lake Erie, although conclusive evidence for this is lacking. There appear to be no records of the alewife from Lake Ontario prior to 1873, after the lake had been stocked with American shad. That species may still occur in Lake Ontario occasionally. A tabular comparison of these species is given to facilitate identification. The alewife is referred to the genus Alosa (rather than Pomolobus) because no reliable characteristics are available to distinguish the species of these two groups. Wilmot recorded a herring-like fish (not the American shad) from Lake Ontario about 1837 which probably was the gizzard shad, though it may have been the alewife. The first record of gizzard shad in Lake Ontario is for 1913, but the species was reported from Lake Erie in 1848, 18 years after the completion of the first canal to connect Lake Erie and the Ohio River. It is hypothesized that the gizzard shad entered Lake Erie in pre-Col...

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