Darryl, one of the students mentored by Patricia, sampled his first macroinvertebates yesterday using a Surber sampler. He’s interested in functional feeding groups—groups of organisms that are categorized with one another based on what they do in the stream (their role)—and how the composition of those groups may differ with the land-use of the stream catchment. There’s a lot of literature on this, and the predictions are related to the river continuum concept—a set of theories about how the ecology of rivers changed from up- to downstream. Jacklyn, a former student of mine in the NAPIRE program, investigated the RCC.

Darryl is particularly interested in the predator functional feeding group, of which there are many: from Naucorids and Belastomatids, to some mayflies and megalopterans. Here, Darryl and Patricia take a few stream samples.