A biology professor at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh is part of a team that is studying invasive ‘rock snot’ algae near the shore of Lake Superior. Dylan Eckhart has more.
Robert Pillsbury, an aquatic ecologist and biology professor at UWO, has spent several years monitoring a type of algae called Didymo, also known as rock snot, in and around Minnesota’s north shore of Lake Superior. According to Shane Nyman of UWO Today, rock snot has been labeled a “well-behaved” alga in Lake Superior for decades, but in 2018 the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources found it for the first time in a north shore stream in Lutsen, Minnesota. In September, the team that included Pillsbury observed 22 rivers between Duluth and the Canadian border, finding that 7 of the rivers contained Didymo. Pillsbury said this work is important because algae and bacteria are the base of the food chain in aquatic systems, and if changes begin to occur, there could be ripple effects further up the chain. According to Nyman, the observations will continue over the next year. Using collections from around North America, DNA analysis will inform whether the nuisance populations in these Minnesota rivers are local strains affected by changing conditions or whether they are non-native and were introduced from other regions.
