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Columbus Sites
Staying at Portage Lakes State Park

Well, we really don't know that the insects that we have collected grew up in the wetlands that we are sampling. However, we do know that the adults that we are collecting are in the vicinity of our sample sites and therefore, using the wetlands to some degree (it is true that the insects could just be passing through!). Since many adult aquatic insects are poor fliers (but not all), we are assuming that most aquatic insects have emerged from aquatic ecosystems in the area. In the future we have plans to test this assumption by looking at aquatic larvae with sediment samples taken in the same area as the light traps.

We feel that all forms of life are valuable. Humans alter the environment in which they live all the time: our actions either directly or indirectly kill many organisms. We are sacrificing insects in our collections so that we can better understand the ecosystems in which they live. Ultimately, that which we learn from these studies will lead to better protection for those organisms that remain.

We have caught as many as 10,000 bugs and as few as 24 in a single trapping event. The number of individuals we catch varies from night to night depending on many different factors including weather, temperature and wind.
The bugs in our traps are not all the same, in fact the types of bugs we catch are different taxa depending on where we are trapping. For instance, we will catch more mayflies in a trap set near the lake than we will in a trap set in an upland area. Mayflies are a wholly aquatic order of insects which means their entire lives are spent in or around the water.

Many species cannot breed with members of other species. Regarding, insects, closely related insects have grossly different morpholoical structures to prevent different species from interbreeding. These morphological differences are called pre-zygotic reproductive isolation mechanisms and constitute the key characters in taxonomic keys ... these differences are what taxonomists uses to "key" out species. Caddisflies occupy many trophic or feeding guilds, i.e., they are herbivores, predators, and detritivores.

Very carefully! Since the 1997 Bug Trip is underway after Labor Day, the crowds are minimal and no one is wearing white except Ralph. We have had the campgrounds mostly to ourselves and the park rangers are friendly when we take more than our alloted space. Only the caterpillars have mobilized to drive us out, but we will not be intimidated by little fuzzy wuzzy things in our hair and sleeping bags.

Yes! While we were staying at Old Woman Creek there were bald eagle sitings almost everytime we canoed into the estuaries to set our traps. There are several pairs of nesting eagles that return there every year. We saw more eagles this year than any of the previous bug trips.

Well, Seth, a caddisfly is a type of insect which lives in wetlands. Young caddisflies build little, portable houses from debris they fasten together with silk. Different kinds of caddisflies will build different kinds of houses. Some eat by trapping food particles that float by in silk nets (like a spider) and others feed on plants. When they are ready to grow into adults they close the door to their house and pupate inside, similar to a caterpillar changing to a moth. This new adult then cuts its way out of the case, goes to the water surface where it molts and flies away. Molting, shedding its skin, is how an insect grows.

There are lots of different kinds of caddisflies (more than 250 species in OHIO !) that live in wetlands and that is what we look at in our insect samples. Thanks for your question, Seth. And keep watching as the team heads to the bogs and fens on inland Ohio.

Well, Trevor we are travelling to the wilds of Ohio. Have you ever been to Ohio ? The part of Ohio that we’re travelling to is where the cities of Cleveland, Akron, Canton and Sandusky are. Some of these cities are the largest cities in Ohio. As you can imagine there are lots of people, roads and houses in our study area. The human population has affected the numbers and types of animals that still live in Ohio. This is what makes our wetland study sites so interesting. Wetlands are a rare type of ecosystem compared to large number of backyards.

Some of our wetlands have been wetlands for the past 18,000 years ! That’s longer than there have been people in Ohio. These bogs and fens are like islands: they are wetlands that are separated from other bogs and fens, or other wetlands by roads, backyards and corn fields. That makes them interesting to biologists because these wetlands have lots of rare plants. However, these wetlands are too small to be homes for many large animals. Animals that you would expect to see are birds, muskrats, beaver, and woodchucks. These are the animals that you would expect to see just about anywhere in northeastern Ohio. At our Lake Erie sites there are lots of neat birds, including bald eagles ! Ask Ayesha (she’ll be on the trip) about bald eagles at Old Woman Creek !

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CALL COMING -- James Kooser

N3ZSI -- Ayesha Gray

KF6NCW -- Nurse Anne Arquette

N8KEZ -- "SCUBA" Joe Szoke

442.600 mHz WD8MDF in Akron Area

147.015 mHz in Geneva/ Akron Area

147.27 mHz in Akron/ Youngstown Area

443.05 mHz in Sandusky (this repeater is not working right now)

146.805 mHz in Sandusky