Benthic Macroinvertebrates

Hmm, what is a Benthic Macroinvertebrate, I wonder? Benthic means something that is in the water, Macro means big enough to see without any type of microscope or anything, and an Invertebrate is a creature that does not have a spine. So, a Benthic Macroinvertebrate is an underwater creature that you can see that does not have a spine!

Biological Integrity: The amount of life that a body of water can hold.

We found lots of good bugs, and our overall biological integrity of our creek was 34 (23 or greater means potentially excellent!). And, we had a lot of Mayflies!

Here's Some Picture of the Benthic Macros that we found in our creek!

A Midge Larva (Tolerant)

Mayfly Larva (Very Intolerant)

Another Type of Mayfly Larva (Very Intolerant, And We Found A Lot of Them!)

A Dead Mayfly Larva (Very Intolerant, But It Was Dead...)

Here's some pictures of us looking at Benthic Macroinvertebrates!

Us looking at Macros

...More Looking At Macros!

There's some fish!

Looking at Macros again!