ELi ON EARTH: Useful Bugs in The Red Cedar

While many people associate the Red Cedar with fish and various wildlife there is a wide diversity of aquatic macroinvertebrates, more commonly referred to as aquatic insects, that also call the river home. Eight major categories of insects spend at least part of their lifecycle in freshwater ecosystems, each playing a vital role in the food web.

Some examples of insects that spend part of their lives in water are dragonflies, caddisflies, mayflies, mosquitos, and black flies. Aquatic insects are used to assess water quality of rivers and streams due to their small size, abundance, and sensitivity to pollution.

The Mid-Michigan Environmental Action Council (Mid-MEAC) has been monitoring the Red Cedar Watershed, with the assistance of countless volunteers, for more than a decade, and currently monitors ten stations for aquatic insects. Data collected by Mid-MEAC is added to the Michigan Clean Water Corps (MiCorps) public database (www.micorps.net), a state-wide volunteer monitoring program. Data collected by Mid-MEAC is used to track the health of the Red Cedar Watershed over time, and serves as an opportunity for the public to get involved in water quality monitoring.

Volunteers are trained to collect aquatic insects using MiCorps procedures and protocols while on-site the day of the collection event. Using nets, volunteers collect insects from a specific stretch of stream and then sort them by characteristic into jars. At a later date volunteers sort the insects, with the assistance of trained professionals, into pollution tolerant and intolerant species.

Some aquatic insects require high levels of dissolved oxygen in the water; when present in large numbers these suggest that the stream is in good condition. Insects have a wide variety of adaptions that allow them to breathe oxygen. For example, mosquito larvae use a pair of abdominal spiracles which open at the tip of a respiratory siphon while mayfly larvae have tracheal gills on their abdomen and thorax. The same sites are monitored by Mid-MEAC each spring and fall, allowing them to track long-term changes in the diversity of aquatic insects.

Mid-MEAC will be conducting their spring collection Saturday June 13^th from 8:00 a.m. to noon. Volunteers are asked to meet at Ferguson Park for orientation and training. Waders and nets will be provided, and all ages are welcome.

For more information about Mid-MEAC and the volunteer stream monitoring contact Jeremy Orr at midmeac@gmail.com.