The 21st Century Matriarch

My son-in-law has an insect collection that he’s mounted in wooden boxes – carefully labeled – to use for reference and outreach. He took the top covers off to make them easier to photograph.

The dragonflies look very much as they do when alive.

2019 11 IMG_6382.jpg — He pointed out the Dobson flies – what hellgrammites (benthic macroinvertebrates) grow up to be. It’s always very exciting to find the larvae in our stream surveys…we don’t see the adults as often. Both specimens appear to be females since the males have longer mandibles.

2019 11 IMG_6383.jpg — Not an invertebrate I want to see in a house when it’s alive!

2019 11 IMG_6385.jpg — Some of the insects are pinned to display their wing patterns with one side folded…the other unfurled.

I’ll share more for other boxes tomorrow….butterflies and moths.

The Howard County Conservancy conducts field trips with 9th graders in the county to gather another year of data for country’s Watershed Report Card and I am one of the volunteers helping to make it happen. In September, I volunteered twice and both were assessing locations along the Middle Patuxent River. About 120 students participate each day. There is a calm along the river before the students arrive and 30 pairs of boots left haphazardly by the first group of the day (the second group had the challenge of finding a matching pair and realizing that there might be water in the boots before putting them on).

I took more pictures on the second day…before the students arrived. The abiotic measures (like pH, nitrate, nitrite, dissolved oxygen, phosphorous, temperature, transparency, stream corridor) are done at 3 stations above the river. On this day those stations were along a paved trail that was close to the river.

Down in the river there were three other stations with D-nets, collection cups, ice cube trays, and plastic sheets….all used to collect macroinvertebrates for the water to further assess the quality of the river.