An update on our project's progress!

While the members of our team are working on their projects across Michigan and Ohio, it has been great to see each team member's results contributing to our perspectives of Neotropical streams. We collected a lot of data observing several aspects of these complex systems!

I [Dana] will give a brief update on what I did this past spring and summer. It has involved months looking in the microscopy lab looking at and classifying aquatic insects. We were characterizing our stream sites based (partially) on the aquatic insect communities there. The insects present or absent can be indicative of water quality and habitat availability. I'll include a couple of pictures taken with the microscope. We collected over 7,000 insects that were all classified to the family level, and the mayflies, stoneflies and caddisflies were taken to the genus level (much easier said than done!). 

After observing the aquatic insects at each site, we also looked at what aquatic insects played the most significant role in differentiating between our trout farm stream, non-trout farm stream, and control sites using a SIMPER analysis. This was even more enlightening as we could pinpoint specific families and genera that differed in each system. We could also use references to look at the pollution tolerances of these families and their functional feeding groups in these environments.

We're continuing to work on data analyses and manuscripts for publications in the future!

 

 

A beautiful Mayobaetis specimen - probably the most colorful insect collected.

 

My personal favorite - Calamoceratidae, a caddisfly that makes its case out of leaves that looks like a sleeping bag.