Dr. Philip Matthews, Affiliate Professor within the Division of Zoology on the College of British Columbia and winner of the 2023 annual Acoustic Zooplankton Fish Profiler (AZFP) award, and Dr Maxon Ngochera, Chief Fisheries Analysis Officer, Malawi, have now accomplished their subject work. This work centered on inspecting the unequalled diel migration of the  aquatic larvae of the Chaoborus edulis, a midge fly that’s plentiful in Lake Malawi, East Africa. For extra particulars on his profitable proposal CLICK HERE.
The aim of this analysis was to make use of ASL’s multifrequency AZFP to higher perceive the physiology and ecology of Chaoborus edulis larvae, the deepest free-diving bugs on this planet. The AZFP revealed that these aquatic midge larvae dive 200 m into the hypoxic zone of the lake throughout the day to keep away from fish predation. Â
Fish keep away from this zone because the focus of oxygen drops to values beneath their tolerance for survival (≤ 2.0 mg/l).  Dr. Matthews and his staff have been instrumental in discovering how this organism regulates its buoyancy to attain vertical ballasting over such a wide variety. Coupled with the AZFP mooring have been a sequence of water high quality monitoring devices that measured dissolved oxygen (DO), pH, and oxygen discount potential. Determine 1 reveals echograms of the vertical migration of the Chaoborus edulis together with a DO profile illustrating the hypoxic and anoxic zones on the 200 kHz panel. Word the steep dive of this species at about 6 am as they transfer deeper into the water column to keep away from predator fish. Determine 2 depicts the emergence of the grownup section of the midge fly as they rise out of the water to kind dense clouds.
Determine 1. AZFP echograms displaying the diel vertical migration of the Chaoborus edulis and the depth of the hypoxic zone. Â
Picture courtesy ASL
