Stream Ecology – aka “playing with bugs all week long”

So this was the first ecology class here that wasn’t a review session for me. So I was kind of stoked on it to begin with, thinking, “hey, stream ecology, this is new. This should be kind of fun.”

So we start out on Monday with Russel, our professor, giving us a couple lectures on his research and what he does, New Zealand, then Kaikoura, kind of talking about streams and ecology, but not really. It was more of a generalized overview of the ecology of the area, but not really streams. So I had no idea what to expect when we went out into the field that afternoon. But it was pretty good…simple, and I didn’t get near as cold as I did during Marine Ecology.

Tuesday after class we went out again, to start our research projects – so that was another long day. Anela and I were research buddies again. :) we ended up studying if there was a difference in biodiversity in pools vs. riffles (fast moving water over rocks) in the stream. Interesting, I know. Haha. Anyway, we spent that evening studying a bunch of bugs under microscopes lol. There were some gnarly looking bugs we found.

But we didn’t have any class Wednesday or Thursday…we had like half the week to work on our research papers! That was so sweet. It was a lot of work, but we had plenty of time to do it. Then we did a presentation Friday, but it could be on anything, so Anela and I did it on our Marine Biology research project on sea anemones lol.

Class was overall straightforward, different, simple, but challenging with the quality of research he expected from us. I liked it.

Leah