Biology Lab 9/19/2013

Last Thursday in biology lab, my lab group took a field trip to the Cedar River to investigate what kind of macro invertebrates were present. We used a tool called a mini-surber sampler to catch the macro invertebrates. This tool works very similar to a regular net, but you have to make sure that the bottom of the mini-surber is touching the bottom of the river, and then you disturb the rocks and soil immediately in front of the mini-surber. This causes the macro invertebrates to be pushed with the current of the water, directly into the netting of the mini-surber. Next, we put any macro invertebrates that we caught into a one gallon tub that was filled halfway. After rounding up a diverse group of macro invertebrates, we used forceps or a plastic dropper to move the invertebrates from the tub to an ice try for identification. Lastly, we identified the organism using a small poster with many different macro invertebrates on it, and recorded what we found. I really enjoyed this lab, because we did something outside of the classroom, and saw some pretty sweet looking bugs!