Clifford E. Kraft

• Cornell University

Thiamine (vitamin B1) is an essential vitamin serving in its diphosphate form as a cofactor for enzymes in the citric acid cycle and pentose-phosphate pathways. Its concentration reported in the pM and nM range in environmental and clinical analyses prompted our consideration of the components used in pre-analytical processing, including the select...

Fish population declines from thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency have been widespread in ecologically and economically valuable organisms, ranging from the Great Lakes to the Baltic Sea and, most recently, the California coast. Thiamine deficiencies in predatory fishes are often attributed to a diet of prey fishes with high levels of thiamine-degradi...

Thiamine (vitamin B1) and its precursor 2‐methyl‐4‐amino‐5‐hydroxymethylpyrimidine (HMP) have been shown to exert an important influence on primary production in marine environments, but little is known about their influence in fresh waters. We evaluated the ecological effects of thiamine and one of its precursors HMP in streams within the Qiyun ca...

“Natural” disasters (also known as geophysical disasters) involve physical processes that have a direct or indirect impact on humans. These events occur rapidly and may have severe consequences for resident flora and fauna as their habitat undergoes dramatic and sudden change. Although most studies have focused on the impact of natural disasters on...

Consistently repeated daily habitat shifts by fish can expose or protect individuals from a variety of threats and influence nutrient transport between systems, yet logistical constraints make individual horizontal movement difficult to study on short time scales. As a result, diel movements by fish are often poorly documented. Suckers (Catostomida...

Recent observations in marine ecosystems show that the presence of thiamine regulates primary production, but little is known about the ecological effect of thiamine in streams. We conducted nutrient enrichment experiments in four streams in the New York's Adirondack Mountains using nutrient diffusing substrates to evaluate the influence of thiamin...

Mercury is a neurotoxic pollutant and contamination in remote ecosystems due to atmospheric mercury deposition coupled with watershed characteristics that influence mercury bioavailability. Biological interactions that affect mercury bioaccumulation are especially relevant as fish assemblages change in response to species introductions and lake man...

Abstract Close‐kin mark–recapture (CKMR) is a powerful new method for the assessment of fish and wildlife population dynamics. Unlike traditional mark–recapture techniques, the use of kinship as an identifying mark is robust to many forms of capture heterogeneity including variation in gear efficiency and tagging‐based effects such as loss and diff...

While catch per unit effort (CPUE) is the most widely used metric for expressing and comparing boat electrofishing catch data, “effort” has been inconsistently defined. Boat electrofishing guidelines refer to both time‐ and distance‐based metrics, with little consensus about the appropriateness of one over the other. Catch rate metrics that use tim...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0039914019307945#appsec1

Deficiencies in thiamine (vitamin B1) cause a host of neurological and reproductive impairments yielding morbidity and mortality across environmental and clinical realms. In a technique analogous to immunomagnetic separation, we introduce the use of thiamine periplasmic binding protein (TBP)-conjugated magnetic beads to isolate thiamine from comple...

Reductions in sulfur emissions have initiated chemical recovery of surface waters impacted by acidic deposition in the Adirondack region of New York State. However, acidified streams remain common in the region, which limits recovery of brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) populations. To investigate liming as a method to accelerate recovery of broo...

Thiamine deficiency complex (TDC) is a disorder resulting from the inability to acquire or retain thiamine (vitamin B1) and has been documented in organisms in aquatic ecosystems ranging from the Baltic Sea to the Laurentian Great Lakes. The biological mechanisms leading to TDC emergence may vary among systems, but in fishes, one common outcome is...

The largescale recovery of eastern forests from historic clearing is a remarkable example of forest ecosystem resilience (Foster and Aber 2004). More than 150 years after the peak of agricultural clearing in eastern North America, many forests across the region have reached maturity and some are progressing toward an old-growth condition (Brooks et...

The function of thiaminase I has remained a long-standing, unsolved mystery. The enzyme is only known to be produced by a small subset of microorganisms, although thiaminase I activity has been associated with numerous plants and animals, and is implicated in thiamine deficiencies brought on by consumption of organisms containing this enzyme. Genom...

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.analchem.6b02092

We evaluated diet niche width, individual diet specialization, and diet composition in six lake populations of Brook Trout Salvelinus fontinalis, a generalist predator known to exhibit benthic and pelagic trophic specialization. Population diet niche width was broad and similar across all lakes, contrasting with that of individual fish, which exhib...

Thiamin (vitamin B1) is a cofactor required for essential biochemical reactions in all living organisms, yet free thiamin is scarce in the environment. The diversity of biochemical pathways involved in the acquisition, degradation, and synthesis of thiamin indicates that organisms have evolved numerous ecological strategies for meeting this nutriti...

Thiamine (vitamin B1) is essential to the health of all living organisms and deficiency has long been associated with diseases in animals such as fish, birds, alligators, and domesticated ruminant mammals. Thiamine is also implicated in several human diseases including Alzheimer's, diabetes, dementia, depression and, most notably, Wernicke–Korsakof...

Supplementary

Motivations for seeking local food include eating foods for quality, nutritional value, ethics and environmental concerns. Wild foods, such as wild game and fish, are increasingly included as a local food source, yet many legally procured species of wild game and fish lack knownnutrition information in the USDA National Nutrient Database for Standa...

Each year, millions of hatchery raised fish are stocked annually into streams and rivers worldwide, yet the effects of hatchery raised fish on stream nutrient cycles has seldom been examined. We quantified the influence of supplemental non-native fish stocking, a widespread recreational fishery management practice, on in-stream nutrient storage and...

From the 1970s to 1990s, more stringent air quality regulations were implemented across North America and Europe to reduce chemical emissions that contribute to acid rain. Surface water pH slowly increased during the following decades, but biological recovery lagged behind chemical recovery. Fortunately, this situation is changing. In the past few...

Brown trout (Salmo trutta) are commonly stocked in streams and rivers worldwide to enhance recreational fisheries, but this practice can adversely impact other organisms in these ecosystems. We used nonmetric multi-dimensional scaling ordinations to evaluate the response of the invertebrate community to trout stocking in two streams in New York Sta...

The fatty acid profiles of wild freshwater fish are poorly characterized as a human food source for several classes of fatty acids, particularly for branched chain fatty acids (BCFA), a major bioactive dietary component known to enter the U.S. food supply primarily via dairy and beef fat. We evaluated the fatty acid content of 27 freshwater fish sp...

Although antibodies and aptamers are commonly used bioaffinity recognition elements, they are not available for many important analytes. As an alternative, we demonstrate use of a periplasmic binding protein (PBP) to provide high affinity recognition for thiamine (vitamin B1), an analyte of great importance to human and environmental health for whi...

Induced changes in the demographic traits of harvested populations produce ecological responses to mortality that are not generally predicted by traditional models. Strong plasticity in maturation rates - commonly observed among intensely harvested populations - varies the time between birth and reproduction of an individual, thereby affecting a po...

Information on fishing effort, catch, harvest, and survival is important for formulating management policies in freshwater fisheries and for understanding the dynamics of aquatic ecosystems. Fisheries managers often use creel surveys to assess fisheries statistics. The mean‐of‐ratios estimator has been traditionally used for estimating catch rates...

Browsing by overabundant white‐tailed deer ( Odocoileus virginianus ) has altered ecological relationships in forest communities across eastern North America. Recent but limited work suggests that deer browsing also selects for particular plant defensive traits. We hypothesized that browsing by deer has imposed selection on defensive traits in an a...

Despite decades of acid deposition, a brook trout population has survived in Honnedaga Lake in the Adirondack region of New York. Open-lake trap net catches declined throughout the 1970s, when brook trout were considered extirpated from the lake but survived in some circum-neutral tributaries. Clean Air Act amendments in 1990 mandated reductions in...

Changing climate conditions are expected to cause an increase in the frequency and severity of hot summers in northeastern North America. The hypolimnion of stratified lake ecosystems provides thermal refuge for coldwater fish during warm summer conditions. By contrast, thermal refuges in non-stratified lakes are restricted in extent. We quantified...

AimBiologists increasingly recognize the roles of humans in ecosystems. Subsequently, many have argued that biodiversity conservation must be extended to environments that humans have shaped directly. Yet popular biogeographical frameworks such as biomes do not incorporate human land use, limiting their relevance to future conservation planning. ‘A...

Honnedaga Lake in the Adirondack region of New York has sustained a heritage brook trout population despite decades of atmospheric acid deposition. Detrimental impacts from acid deposition were observed from 1920 to 1960 with the sequential loss of acid-sensitive fishes, leaving only brook trout extant in the lake. Open-lake trap net catches of bro...

Vitamin B1 (thiamine) deficiencies can lead to neurological disorders, reproductive failure and death in wild and domestic animal populations. In some cases, disease is brought about by the consumption of foods high in thiaminase I activity. Levels of thiaminase activity in these foods are highly variable and the factors leading to production of th...

Forested headwater streams play an important role in watershed nutrient dynamics, and wood is thought to be a key factor influencing habitat structure and nitrate-nitrogen dynamics in many forested streams. Because wood in streams can promote nitrogen uptake through denitrification, we hypothesized that nitrate uptake velocities would decrease foll...

Clean Air Act Amendments have reduced acid deposition across the northeastern US, but recovery of surface waters has lagged because of calcium depletion in Adirondack forest soils. Current estimates suggest that 65% of headwater streams are episodically or chronically acidified. To date, calcium availability in soil has not increased so remediation...

Background/Question/Methods For decades, the large-scale mortality of salmonine fishes in the Laurentian Great Lakes and Baltic Sea from thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency has presented an unsolved mystery in aquatic ecosystem management. Recent studies have shown that this thiamine deficiency results from the consumption of clupeid prey containing...

Abstract Over the past five decades, a reproductive failure related to thiamine deficiency, referred to as thiamine deficiency complex (TDC), has been observed in valuable salmonine fishes in the Great Lakes and Finger Lakes in North America and the Baltic Sea in Europe. The cause of TDC has been linked to the consumption of clupeid fish, which con...

Identification of factors that make lakes vulnerable to invasion of non-native fishes can help identify ecosystems likely to be invaded and species that could become invasive. We evaluated whether private land ownership and restrictive land use designations influenced the number of non-native, native, and total number of species in 1401 lakes in th...

Background/Question/Methods Riparian forests regulate linkages between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, yet relationships among riparian forest development, stand structure, and stream habitats are poorly understood in many temperate deciduous forest systems. Our research in the Adirondack Mountains of New York has 1) described structural attr...

Redd (nest) surveys for resident brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) were conducted annually in a mountain lake in northern New York for 11 years with multiple surveys conducted during the spawning season in eight of those years. Repeated surveys throughout the spawning season allowed us to fit an individually based parametric model and estimate th...

We evaluated the performance of rainbow trout in food-limited lake and hatchery environments using whole-body water content as a proxy for fish energy reserves and lipid content. Relative abundance of rainbow trout stocked in an oligotrophic lake from 2002 to 2006 decreased by 88% in 145 days. Whole-body water content of rainbow trout increased fol...

The spatial distribution of instream wood influences important ecological processes but has proven challenging to describe quantitatively. We present a modified version of a previously described metric used to quantify the spatial extent and pattern of instream wood distribution, then apply this approach in evaluating the distribution of wood habit...

Young-of-year (YOY) brook trout were captured by backpack electrofishing during late July-early August 2008-2010 in five Adirondack lakes varying in thermal stratification patterns and acid impairment. Three different habitat types were sampled in each lake: tributaries, seeps (groundwater influenced areas), and lake shoreline areas (no groundwater...

A modelling approach based on bioenergetics was used to estimate the role of fish in nutrient recycling. Phosphorus excretion (PU) and nitrogen excretion by young-of-the-year (YOY) and older yellow perch (Perca flavescens) were estimated for a limnetic system: Lake Memphremagog. This model successfully predicted PU by comparison with previous estim...

Thiaminase induced thiamine deficiency occurs in fish, humans, livestock and wild animals. A non-radioactive thiaminase assay was described in 2007, but a direct comparison with the radioactive 14C-thiamine method which has been in use for more than 30 years has not been reported. The objective was to measure thiaminase activity in forage fish (ale...

Stream pH and stream habitat have both been identified as important environmental features influencing total fish biomass in streams, but few studies have evaluated the relative influence of habitat and pH together. We measured total fish biomass, stream habitat, and stream pH in sixteen sites from three tributary systems in the northeastern United...

Stressful water temperatures negatively affect physiological processes in fishes, yet evidence for how elevated temperatures influence population-level characteristics is rare. An 8-year field study of brook trout Salvelinus fontinalis in an unstratified Adirondack lake revealed that an aggregate measure of chronically stressful summer water temper...

Ice storms are an important and recurring ecological disturbance in many temperate forest ecosystems. In 1998, a severe ice storm damaged over ten million hectares of forest across northern New York State, eastern Canada, and New England impacting ecosystem processes across the landscape. This study investigated the spatial arrangement of forest da...

Late-successional riparian forests often regulate autotrophic microhabitats in low-order streams through shading provided by canopies. However, few studies have linked forest structure with periphyton microhabitat in adjoining streams. Our hypotheses were that (1) the heterogeneous horizontal structure in old-growth forests creates more spatially v...

Population control through harvest has the potential to reduce the abundance of nuisance and invasive species. However, demographic structure and density-dependent processes can confound removal efforts and lead to undesirable consequences, such as overcompensation (an increase in abundance in response to harvest) and instability (population cyclin...

Wood is an important component of forested stream ecosystems, and stream restoration efforts often incorporate large wood. In most cases, however, stream restoration projects are implemented without information regarding the amount of wood that historically occurred or the natural rates of wood recruitment. This study uses a space-for-time analysis...

We evaluated methylmercury (MeHg) concentrations in native apex predators, lake trout Salvelinus namaycush before and after the large-scale removal of introduced predators, smallmouth bass Micropterus dolomieu in a 270 ha Adirondack lake. Previous studies show that removing competitors can result in increased growth and decreased mercury concentrat...

The northeastern United States is influenced by the atmospheric deposition of mercury. Subsequent integration of methylmercury into aquatic food webs results in contamination levels in fish that are high enough to present health concerns for humans who consume fish. Resource and sampling limitations have hindered a comprehensive understanding of me...

Understanding how juvenile brook trout Salvelinus fontinalis from different sources contribute to fishable populations would be facilitated by a batch mark that could be applied to early life stages and be retained and visible throughout a fish's life. We evaluated visible implant elastomer (VIE) as a long-term batch mark for juvenile brook trout i...

An intensive seven-year removal of adult, juvenile, and young-of-the-year smallmouth bass (Micropterus dolomieu) from a north temperate lake (Little Moose Lake, New York, USA) resulted in an increase in overall population abundance, primarily due to increased abundance of immature individuals. We developed a density-dependent, stage-structured mode...

Stream acidification across the northeastern US impacts fish abundance and fish communities. In this study, we document a fish community shift in the upper mainstem of Hubbard Brook (NH) from the presence of at least three species in the 1960s to the presence of only one species today. Cottus cognatus (Slimy Sculpin) and Rhinichthys atratulus (Blac...

Large wood (LW) is an important feature in many streams in northeastern North America, yet the dynamics (recruitment, movement, and export) of large wood remain largely undocumented for streams in this region. In this study we quantify the dynamics of LW in 400m of a second-order, high gradient, boulder-dominated stream in the eastern Adirondack Mo...

No consistent explanation has been found for the variability in the thiaminase activity of alewives Alosa pseudoharengus despite the role of alewife thiaminase in large-scale salmonine mortality in the Laurentian Great Lakes. We conducted experiments to evaluate the effect of two stressors, reduced salt content in the water and food limitation, on...

Most surveys of large wood in streams are conducted by counting and measuring every piece of large wood within a reach, a technique that is effective but time-consuming. In this study we evaluated an alternative method that takes less time and can be employed in studies in which an estimate of total large wood volume along a stream reach is the pri...

Forested headwater streams play an important role in watershed nutrient cycles and woody debris may be key to in-stream nutrient retention. We conducted an experimental manipulation of in-stream wood to specifically investigate influences of woody debris on nitrogen dynamics in streams of the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest. In summer and fall 20...

An alternative method for measuring thiaminase I activity in complex samples is described. This assay is based on the selective consumption of the highly chromophoric 4-nitrothiophenolate by thiaminase I, resulting in a large decrease in absorbance at 411nm. This new assay is simple and sensitive, and it requires only readily available chemicals an...

Almost 30 years after natural reproduction of Chinook salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha was discovered in Lake Ontario tributaries, little is known about the feeding dynamics of these fish after they enter the lake. This study assesses consumption by naturally produced age-0 Chinook salmon as they enter the nearshore region of Lake Ontario after emig...

Large-scale observational studies in eastern Canada and the northeastern USA have concluded that introduced littoral predators are responsible for reductions in native fish diversity and abundance. To determine whether nonnative predator removal could increase native littoral fish abundance, we removed 47,682 smallmouth bass Micropterus dolomieu fr...

Riparian forests regulate linkages between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, yet relationships among riparian forest development, stand structure, and stream habitats are poorly understood in many temperate deciduous forest systems. Our research has (1) described structural attributes associated with old-growth riparian forests and (2) assessed l...

We assessed the influence of ice-storm-derived debris dams on aquatic macroinvertebrates and stream substrates in a high-gradient watershed in the eastern Adirondack Mountains of New York State. Using a modification of electrofishing techniques, invertebrates were collected once before (June 2000) and once after (June 2001) wood removal from the do...

The zebra mussel, Dreissena polymorpha, has spread through eastern North American aquatic ecosystems during the past 15years. Whereas spread among navigable waterways was rapid, the invasion of isolated watersheds has progressed more slowly and less predictably. We examined the patterns of overland spread over multiple spatial and temporal extents...

Non-native species have increased extinction rates, decreased diversity, altered organism distributions, and constrained ecosystem functioning in native aquatic and terrestrial communities. Although widespread fish introductions have dramatically altered fish communities in north temperate lakes, restoration of native fish communities has been rare...

Brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) spawning in lakes occurs over areas of groundwater discharge. The discharge rate and chemistry of this groundwater are crucial to brook trout egg survival and reproductive success. While most studies have reported that groundwater discharge in brook trout redds is buffered relative to the surrounding lake water,...

The relative influence of local habitat variables and stream network position on fish assemblages was evaluated in this study of first-order through third-order streams within the Beaverkill–Willowemoc watershed in New York. We compared fish distribution and abundance over local and landscape scales by surveying 69 randomly selected tributaries wit...

The 1998 ice storm was a large-extent ecological disturbance that severely affected the eastern Adirondack forests of northern New York. Ice damage produced widespread breakage of limbs and trunks in susceptible trees. Although ice storms are common within northeastern North American forests, the magnitude and extent of the 1998 storm far exceeded...

A before-after, control-impact study was conducted to evaluate brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) response to the removal of debris dams and woody debris from an ice-storm-impacted stream system in the eastern Adirondack Mountains in New York State. A total of 10 reach pairs were established on two first-order streams, two second-order streams, an...

The spatial distribution of large woody debris (LWD) in streams was evaluated using Neighbor K statistics, following extensive wood deposition from an ice storm in the eastern Adirondack Mountains (New York). Two years after wood deposition, we surveyed individual pieces of LWD in one stream and surveyed debris dam locations in eight streams within...

In January 1998, an ice storm damaged forests in northeastern United States and eastern Canada, causing coarse woody debris (CWD) deposition in riparian areas and associated streams. During 1999 and 2000, tree canopy damage, stream physical habitat, and wood deposition were evaluated within 51 first-, second-, and third-order streams located within...

Assessing the spatial distribution of organisms across landscapes is a key step toward determining processes that produce observed patterns. The spatial distribution of an invasive aquatic mollusk, the zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha), was examined in two lake-rich areas (Belarus and midwestern United States) with contrasting invasion histories....

Assessing the spatial distribution of organisms across landscapes is a key step toward determining processes that produce observed patterns. The spatial distribution of an invasive aquatic mollusk, the zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha), was examined in two lake-rich areas (Belarus and midwestern United States) with contrasting invasion histories....

The occurrence of ten butterfly taxa (Clossiana eunomia dawsonii, Clossiana freija, Clossiana frigga, Clossiana titania, Coenonympha inornata, Erebia discoidalis, Incisalia augustinus, Lycaena dorcas, Lycaena epixanthe, Oeneis jutta) was analyzed within three acid peatland habitat types from the Lake Superior drainage basin of northwestern Wisconsi...

;1 i Abstract. Gravity models are commonly used by geographers to predict migration and interaction between populations and regions. Even though rarely used by ecologists, gravity models allow estimation of long-distance dispersal between discrete points in heterogeneous landscapes. We developed a production-constrained gravity model to forecast ze...

Zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha) have spread rapidly in North America by dispersal within connected bodies of waters. This study provides the first systematic evaluation of rates of zebra mussel dispersal to inland lakes separated from source populations by functional dispersal barriers. Plankton samples were examined for this exotic species fr...

The objectives of this study were to evaluate seasonal changes in the energy density of age-0 and age-1 muskellunge Esox masquinongy and to compare energy density to various estimates of condition. Three treatment groups of muskellunge were evaluated to determine temporal changes in energy density (J/g wet weight [ww]), water content, condition fac...

The objectives of this study were to evaluate seasonal changes in the energy density of age-0 and age-1 muskellunge Esox masquinongy and to compare energy density to various estimates of condition. Three treatment groups of muskellunge were evaluated to determine temporal changes in energy density (J/g wet weight [ww]), water content, condition fac...

We examined the fishing activity and fish consumption of Hmong residents of Green Bay, Wisconsin to determine whether their fishing activity was similar to other Wisconsin residents. Previous studies have raised concerns that higher fish consumption by minority groups living in urban areas may increase their health risks from consuming contaminated...

A bioenergetics model of fish growth was used to estimate phosphorus (P) cycling by the population of Lake Michigan alewives Alosa pseudoharengus in the mid-1970s. The mean annual standing stock of alewives during the mid-1970s contained 1,500 tonnes of phosphorus, representing a substantial pool of particulate phosphorus unavailable to algae, An e...

Comparisons of growth rates and consumption rates among fish populations are not straightforward and are difficult to interpret in the absence of other information about the populations. Differences in temperature regimes, reproductive timing, activity cost, prey availability, caloric densities of predator and prey, and allometric effects of body s...

Parameters of a phosphorus cycling model were estimated for two configurations of a lake ecosystem. The piscivore-dominated configuration had one more trophic level than the planktivore-dominated configuration. We derived four main conclusions from analysis of the model. (1) Results support the argument of DeAngelis et al. that turnover rate of a l...

We estimated a fyke-net selectivity function for yellow perch Perca flavescens in Green Bay, Lake Michigan, by comparing length-frequency distributions of yellow perch captured in fyke nets with different mesh sizes in 1986. Using a length—girth relationship for Green Bay yellow perch, we expressed selectivity as the ratio of girth (G) to effective...

Resource partitioning was studied in two benthic Lake Michigan fishes, the deepwater sculpin,Myoxocephalus thompsoni, and the slimy sculpin,Cottus cognatus, that exhibit nearly disjunct distributions along a hypolimnetic depth gradient. Fish were collected in an area of sympatry over two 24 h periods. These sculpins exhibited food segregation—slimy...

Thesis - Wisconsin. Bibliography: leaves 55-59.