Brine shrimp are central to the ecology of the hypersaline Great Salt Lake, where fish and frogs cannot tolerate the salt concentration but Artemia franciscana thrives as the dominant organism with few aquatic predators. They chiefly provide food for migrating waterfowl and shorebirds in spring and fall, including Wilson's Phalarope, Eared Grebe, Black Necked Stilt, American Avocet, and the California Gull, helping these birds build fat reserves for migration. Dormant brine shrimp cysts can be carried by birds to the ocean, where they hatch into nauplii, but the nauplii do not survive there because they lack protection from ocean predators. Brine shrimp cysts also became an important larval feed for shrimp and fish farmers, and in the fall they are harvested from the lake's surface, washed, dried, canned, and shipped to aquaculture hatcheries worldwide. Commercial harvesting of brine shrimp cysts began in 1950 through Cleon Sanders of Sanders Brine Shrimp Company and grew into an important Utah industry. Brine shrimp reproduce in two ways: ovoviviparous reproduction, producing live young from March through September when food, oxygen, and water temperature favor growth, and oviparous reproduction, producing dehydrated dormant cysts from September through mid-January when food and oxygen are limited by shorter day length and cooler water. The shrimp rely mainly on algae for food and oxygen, while the algae rely on the shrimp for carbon dioxide and nutrients from their feces. By late December, water temperatures drop to about -4 degrees Celsius, or 25 Fahrenheit, and most adult brine shrimp die, but the cysts survive winter in the water or along the shoreline. With spring rain and snowmelt, the cysts hydrate and hatch, and as microalgae and bacteria become abundant with longer days and warmer temperatures, the nauplii grow into adults in three to six weeks and begin reproducing.