A successful field trip... to the city!

Finally the project has started! For it, I had to move to the Netherlands, as it is here that I can find the plants and insects for this project. Dr. Joop van Loon has graciously donated his lab facilities at the University of Wageningen, and arranged a pass for me to come and go for two months. Dr. Adrie van der Werf has provided me with the fern for this project: Azolla, which he cultures in the Wageningen campus. Finding the aphid was more challenging. Today in the morning we embarked in a field trip to search for the water lily aphid (Rhopalosiphum nymphaeae), which not only feeds from water lilies, but from the fern Azolla, as well as many other plants, for instance the angiosperm Lemna. In fact, there are lots of Lemna in and around Wageningen, so we set to find the aphid on them, at the suggestion of Adrie. First we looked in a couple of ponds near our building, but the waters were clear there.

 

Then we moved to the city, as there are several canals there with lots of aquatic plants. We caught some plants with a net... No Lemna there and no aphids either!

Adrie and me, examining some city pond plants for aphids...

 

Then we moved to a duck pond located around the middle of Wageningen, and it was covered with Lemna :-) so we caught some, and voila! we saw several R. nymphaeae aphids on them!

 

Back to the lab, I went through the catch of the day and was able to rescue a few aphids... hopefully they will reproduce in the green house... otherwise it will be another trip to the pond!