Pickerel Lake Area Excursion

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This chill excursion brought us to the southern edge of Pickerel Lake, a forested area, and a vernal pond. 

Stats for nerds:
5/19/2023, cloudy, breeze, waves, 60°F
44.793915672750394, -84.97474141290496

We pulled off at the Pickerel Lake State Forest Campground and hiked a few minutes to an open area by the lake shore. Many of us were interested in collecting large dragonfly larvae, ground beetles, and flying insects. Julia caught a dragonfly right away, some people donned waders to catch aquatic insects, and Sam caught a turtle while fishing for insects.

                    The painted turtle that Sam caught.                                           My artistic interpretation of the turtle.

Other folks (including me) scoured the leaf detritus for beetles and other insects. Paige and I found fat scarab beetles and other people found some interesting beetles. Unfortunately, Sarah could not find herself a third scarab beetle. There were snails, slugs, roly polys, and centipedes, but those were not insects we could sample. Since most of us were searching the leaves, Paige and I decided to go across the road to a large vernal pool and explore more areas. 

The dark purple dots on the left represent the area where our class sampled. The red dashed line is my and Paige's path we took to get to the vernal pool, and the green spot is where we sampled.

On the other side of the road on the way to the vernal pool, we saw a dead young tree with twigs that stuck out at odd 120° angles. It stuck out to me as unusually geometric branching.

When we made it through the sticks and saplings, we were greeted by a host of mosquitoes. I learned my lesson from Bug Cannon Creek, so I was wearing mosquito protection. Paige just had long sleeves on, and they went after her. We used our nets to scoop up muck from the edge of the vernal pool. After netting around for a few minutes, we found some dragonfly larvae and beetles. Then, Paige starts oooing and aaaahing at her net, and she has like three dragonfly nymphs and other crawly things from just one scoop! This jackpot spot kept gifting us with more specimens. It was nestled at the base of a small deciduous tree with low branches. The water was dark, cool, and thick with sticks and leaves for hiding in. I imagine the dragonfly nymphs found a lot of prey right there. 

Ephemeral Pools Insect Biodiversity

In the forests of Michigan, vernal pools are common yet no two are the same. They come in the spring, and go in the fall. But vernal pools have so many factors that affect the things that live in them. Vernal pool characteristics are highly variable and can change from month to month. According to ecologists at the Michigan Natural Features Inventory, each vernal pool is a unique "result of a complex response to and interplay among climate, weather, hydrologic processes, water and soil chemistry, pool geometry, fire patterns, fauna, and vegetation." Because they change so much and have so many microhabitats throughout the year (like that one spot Paige found), they are used by many species at different points in their life cycles. But with habitat fragmentation, they are becoming fewer and farther between, meaning some species populations are becoming more isolated and losing resilience to extinction. The road Paige and I crossed is a hidden-in-plain-sight gravesite for many animals trying to cross from the vernal pool to the lake and back. Think about the salamanders and frogs and turtles. If even one part of one pool's ecosystem goes down, the whole thing could crumble, or at least change beyond recognition, and impact the surrounding ecosystems. People might think of vernal pools as mosquito breeding grounds, and therefore it is okay to destroy them in the name of human development, but they are critical to many animals' life cycles and resource supplies. 

References: 

https://mnfi.anr.msu.edu/abstracts/ecology/Vernal_Pool.pdf
https://vernal-pool-patrol-mnfi.hub.arcgis.com/

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