Manistee River!

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 For my 3rd and final blog, I am going to talk about our field trip to the Manistee River. The Manistee River is located in the northern half of Michigan’s lower peninsula. It is about 26 miles long with recreational options available to the public (Rivers.gov). Some of those include kayaking/canoeing and fishing. In our case we did aquatic insect collecting!

During this trip we were looking for caddisflies, mayflies, stoneflies and any other aquatic insect. I specifically was looking for caddisfly nymphs. Since we were looking for aquatic insects, we brought aquatic nets, and we also brought some arial nets in case we saw any flying insects. This river, like most here in Michigan was very sandy. The middle section of the river was mostly sand with some patches of silt. The banks had a lot more silt mixed in with the sand making a very thick soil type. The thick silt plus traveling upstream made it difficult to walk at times, some of us getting stuck in the process. There were multiple microhabitats in this river housing a wide range of incest species. The first microhabitat I visited was near the bank about 60 yards upstream from where we entered the river. This specific area was really interesting because there was a U-shaped pool cut out of the bank. It was maybe 2 feet across and about 1 foot deep. When I sampled this pool, I found 2 armored mayflies. This part of the river really intrigued me because this was the only spot I saw that had a U shaped cut out in the bank. It makes me wonder what caused that to happen and if there are other insects living there. Working farther upstream I came across woody debris in a shallow portion near the U-shaped pool. The water was really clear, so it was easy to see if there were any insects on the logs. Fortunately, there were tons of caddisfly nymphs scattered across the wood. Most of the caddisflies were in cases of varying compositions. I collected two with square shape cases made of twigs and two with tubular cases made with vertical twigs of varying lengths. I identified the square cased caddisflies as Trichoptera brachycentridae or commonly known as the Humpless Case Maker Caddisfly (Voshell 2003). The species with the vertically oriented twigs is known as the Northern Case Maker Caddisfly or Trichoptera limnephilidea. Both caddisfly species are pictured below.

 Trichoptera brachycentridae (bottom) and Trichoptera limnephilidea (top). Picture by me!


After collecting my caddisflies, I ventured to the opposite side of river which housed more aquatic vegetation. This can be seen in the picture below. 

 Aquatic Plants, original pictures by me!

Here I sadly did not collect any insects, but I did see a few whirligig beetles and some water striders. From here I went to a small island in the middle of the river that held a large tree stump and some fallen logs. The stump was partially underwater so I decided to sample around it to see if I would find anything new. First, I found another caddisfly nymph, but this one was much larger than the previous ones. This caddisfly is pictured below. Around this same area I found a stonefly nymph as well.


Small Island on Manistee River, picture by me!


                                                        Trichoptera Phryganediae, Large Caddisfly, original picture. 

This was by far my favorite trip because of how pretty the scenery was and the different microhabitats all around. I really loved how there were multiple different areas fairly close together that could be sampled. I was looking specifically for caddisflies on this trip which is why I didn’t collect a variety of insects. I would really like to go back one day and sample again to see what else lives in this aquatic habitat. I would also like to do more terrestrial collecting here since I didn’t do any of that. From what I remember there was a large diversity of vegetation around so I can assume that lots of different organisms are present there as well. I highly recommend venturing this river to anyone that visits!

 

Sources

Voshell, J. R. (2003). A guide to common freshwater invertebrates of North America. McDonald & Woodward Pub.

Manistee river. Rivers.gov. https://www.rivers.gov/rivers/river/manistee

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