Undergraduate Research Symposium

Jackob A. Lutchen, Bradley J. Ramin, and Tracey M. Anderson
Division of Science and Math, University of Minnesota, Morris

With the spread of agriculture, riparian trees are disappearing from streams, so it is important to investigate how woody debris compares to the benthic (bottom) substrate. In order to investigate the role of wood as habitat in an agricultural stream we collected paired macroinvertebrate samples from wood and benthic habitats in the Pomme de Terre River (PTR) upstream and downstream from an impoundment (N=5 in each reach). We collected 37 taxa from wood and benthic environments, 26 of which were insects. Twelve taxa occurred only on wood while only 1 was unique to the benthic habitat.[TMA1] Taxon richness did not differ significantly between benthic and wood habitats. However, when upstream and downstream reaches were analyzed separately we noted that significantly more taxa occurred on upstream wood samples (paired t-test, p