(Updated 5 Jan 1997)
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) has been conducting stream and riparian surveys in the Tillamook Bay watershed. This study will result in a classification of the salmon habitat potential for each stream segment. A group of highschool students from Neah-kan-nie Highschool (Mrs. Beth Gienger's Class) are investigating the possibility of using benthic macroinvertebrates and adult insects as indicators of salmon habitat. The first step is to see if insect communities respond to physical and biological factors along stream segments and if these stream segments can be distinguished on the basis of the insect communities. After that we'll see if insect communities can be used to distinguish between the various classes of salmon habitat that were determined by ODFW.
Seventy one light trap collections have been made from 20 May- 25 Oct 1995. Light trap were run in pairs at three sites: Site A is an area along the stream where off channel (alcove) salmon habitat was constructed, Site B is an area where logs were placed in the stream to improve instream salmon habitat and Site C is unmanipulated. All sites occur along a 4 km segment of the Miami River(Tillamook County) in northwest Oregon.
To date 85,622 individual insects have been sorted to order. Fifty one of the 71 trapping events have been completed. Unlike adult insect collections in other aquatic ecosystems (in Ohio and Texas), wholly aquatic insect orders typically represent less than 1% of the total number of insects collected during a trapping event.
|
Week No. |
Percent of Ind.that belong to Wholly Aquatic Orders |
|---|---|
|
20 |
0.00 |
|
23 |
0.01 |
|
25 |
0.00 |
|
27 |
0.01 |
|
29 |
0.01 |
|
31 |
0.01 |
|
32 |
0.00 |
|
35 |
0.01 |
|
37 |
0.01 |
|
39 |
0.16 |
|
41 |
0.07 |
|
43 |
0.45 |
In order to determine if insect flight activity was related to rain, evening low temperatures and phase of the moon, simple correlations were performed on preliminary data. In all cases, the average number of insects collected in all traps during the 12 collection events were only weakly correlated with ppt, temperature and moon phase.
|
|
The percent of the moon surface was calculated for each of the sampling dates. Correlations were made between percent of the moon surface exposed and the average number of individuals collected in all traps for each sampling date. |
| Correlations were also made with the amount of PPT on traping nights. |
|
|
|
Correlations were made between low temperatures for each collection night at the average number of individuals collected. |
Link to the webpage being produced by the students
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R.J. Garono's Homepage
