Thermal Tolerance of the Alewife
- 1 May 1982
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in Transactions of the American Fisheries Society
- Vol. 111 (3) , 389-391
- https://doi.org/10.1577/1548-8659(1982)111<389:ttota>2.0.co;2
Abstract
The alewife Alosa pseudoharengus often dies in large numbers in the Great Lakes during the spring. The reasons for this mass mortality are still unclear although one of the causes is believed to be thermal death when alewives encounter warm inshore temperatures. Published reports on upper lethal temperature indicate that the ultimate upper lethal temperature of adult alewives is near 25 C. In contrast, young of the year appear to have an ultimate upper incipient lethal temperature slightly above 30 C. Published values of thermal tolerance of the adults may be low because of the difficulty of obtaining healthy specimens for experimentation. We found that when adult alewives were well adapted to laboratory conditions they could survive temperatures several degrees higher than predicted. The ultimate upper lethal temperature was estimated to be in the range 31–34 C.This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: