Macroinvertebrates

Day 2 of the Field!

7/22/2024

Today was a pretty fun day. I brought my best friend with me to collect the macroinvertebrates, which made it a lot more fun and a lot more eventful. We got to the site at about 12, in the same place as yesterday. We had a little snack, then I took my daily measurements. Today's conductivity was 1270 microsiemens per centimeter, less than yesterday's. It was also a little colder, at 19.8 degrees Celcius. The pH was 6.8. I didn't expect to see a lot of macroinvertebrates, but we did actually get quite a few! The total was 56 after 3 dips. The majority were stoneflies, with 22, which was 39% of my total macroinvertebrate count. I had a close 21 beetles, which came out to like 38%. The rest were mainly midges, with a couple of other miscellaneous macroinvertebrates. We did find one really big hellgrammite which I was honestly kind of grossed out by. Pretty much everything else seemed similar to yesterday: birds tweeting, bubbling water, and the canopy creating little spots of sunlight on the stream. Notably, there were a lot less people walking their dogs, most likely cause it was Monday, and maybe because of that there was a lot more wildlife out and about, like some frogs and a couple squirrels running around.